Some cable TV personalities, talking heads, and plain old historians and historian wannabes have taken to finding connections between President Joe Biden and former Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson. A common rationale: The historic eras in which both FDR and LBJ, and now Biden, first took office. And the scope of public policy initiatives all three initiated virtually from the day they were sworn in.
Like most sweeping generalizations, there are strains of truth and fact and lots to quibble about in these comparisons. One analogy not having gotten much attention, however, is that involving Biden’s ambitious climate change action items and how they compare with President John F. Kennedy’s May 25, 1961, commitment to land Americans on the moon and bring them safely back to terra firma.
In this month’s original “This Is Not Cool” video by Yale Climate Connections independent videographer Peter Sinclair, the link between the historic “moon shot” goal and the Biden hoped-for climate objectives is front and center (and posted here, coincidentally, on the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s pronouncement to Congress). Moon shot? Wishful thinking? How can such sweeping changes occur in the tight time frames often assigned to them? The video explores those questions and more. Take a look.
