George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Joe Biden: Which president is not like the others? Not a joke, as the latter might say.
According to far-left online magazine Salon, they’re all similar. In an article whose headline assured readers it was not a joke, writer Matthew Rozsa said Biden, like the founding fathers, is a “visionary” whose greatness is missed by his peers.
“From the start of his administration, he has pushed for an ambitious economic program: expanded access to health care, major investments in job creation, financial assistance to parents, accelerated development of green energy and other steps to address climate change,” Rozsa wrote. “To this point, the political fates have cursed Joe Biden with the same bad luck that afflicted Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and other founding fathers at their most ambitious but least effective — but without granting him anything close to their storied accomplishments or historical legacy.”
As a historian, I can find no similarities among Jefferson, Washington and Biden. This is pure fiction on the part of the Salon reporter. Biden has no leadership skills and has been in government service for 47 years with no progress for the people but enriched himself.
— Jimmy Williams (@JimmyW_CFP) July 4, 2022
The headline of the article, “How Joe Biden is like America’s Founding Fathers – and no, I’m not kidding,” seems to anticipate some skepticism from readers. Many conservatives consider Biden, whose approval rating is below 40%, to be at least the worst American president since Jimmy Carter, and possibly of all time.
Rozsa got clobbered on Twitter for the comparison.
“I’m getting nauseous!” wrote Jeff Kirsh. “It’s July 4th and you’re putting Biden in the same sentence with Washington & Jefferson!”
“Washington and Jefferson were great leaders,” tweeted Gary Pettis. “Can you deny that? History will remember Joe Biden to be a weak leader who handled self-created crises ineptly. He’s like Carter, which proves that Progressive Democrats talk a good game to the middle class but they can’t govern.”
Rozsa charitably admits that without the founding fathers, “the United States would not exist today,” and acknowledges that Jefferson was a “complicated genius.” But just like Biden, he writes, Jefferson had many progressive ideas that got shot down by small-minded contemporaries.
“Jefferson’s inability to realize his economic vision doesn’t detract from his overall legacy, but it certainly offers some perspective on how even revered statesmen can have important ideas that go nowhere,” Rozsa writes.
One Twitter user said Rozsa should spend more time reading and less writing.
“Far left Salon writer should read the Federalist Papers before making a fool of himself saying Biden comparable to Jefferson & Washington,” wrote Jack Bones.
A 2021 survey of historians by C-Span rated Washington as the second-greatest U.S. president, behind only Abraham Lincoln. It ranked Jefferson seventh. Biden was not included in the survey.