Biden looks to Roosevelt as model for uniting nation

In 1930s, FDR stared down a depression and implacable political foes

20210121NY Biden sitting at desk

President Joe Biden pauses as he signs his first executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 20. © AP

MIKIO SUGENO, Nikkei Washington bureau chief

WASHINGTON -- Every day, as U.S. President Joe Biden looks up from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, he will see a massive portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a fellow Democrat who assumed the same post more than eight decades ago.

Like Biden, FDR took office in a time of crisis. After the devastation of the Great Depression that began in 1929, he put the economy back on its feet through the New Deal -- a series of programs, projects and financial reforms that helped stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to the suffering.

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