Would an Election Victory Be Joe Biden’s F.D.R. Moment?

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

President, Barack, News, Politics, Wnyc, Obama, Lizza, Washington, Wickenden

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2020

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

Joe Biden has been playing it safe during the coronavirus pandemic, but Evan Osnos got the chance to sit down with the nominee in person. It was too hot to sit outside, but the campaign staff didn’t want an outsider in Biden’s home, so the interview took place in a small house on the property that Biden’s late mother stayed in. In a wide-ranging conversation, Biden compares his position—should he win—to that of Franklin Roosevelt: taking office during a disaster, he argues, he would have an opportunity to effect a hugely ambitious agenda, but driven by pragmatism rather than ideology. (He was not comparing himself to Roosevelt, he hastened to add.) While the country is ever more partisan, Biden describes his centrism and his propensity for off-the-cuff remarks as an advantage. “The good news is the bad news,” he told Osnos. “Everybody knows me, and you guys know me, the good and bad. . . . It’s kind of hard to pin a label on someone that’s inconsistent with who they are. To make me out to be a revolutionary, it’s awful hard to do. Conversely, it’s awful hard to make me out to be a right-wing, very conservative Democrat.”

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1:12.2	I'm Dorothy Wickender. On today's Politics and More podcast, the New Yorkers Evan Osnos talks
1:18.4	with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. In July, Osnose traveled to Delaware for a sit-down
1:24.5	interview with Biden at his home.
1:35.2	I'm sitting here, sort of, virtually, with my colleague Evan Osnose, who's been covering politics for us since 2008, hard to believe. Now, Evan, you've been working on a profile of Joe
1:41.0	Biden for quite some time, and at the end of July, you went to meet him at his
1:45.5	home in Delaware. What was the circumstances? What was it like to talk to him in person at that
1:51.1	moment? Well, as you can imagine, frankly, he was sort of glad to see another human being because
1:58.4	they have him under very tight restrictions. There's basically two
2:02.2	aids that go in and out of the house, one of his assistants and one of Jill Biden's assistance.
2:07.6	And then there's this secret service detail. But other than that, they really don't have a lot of
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