Historian and author Jon Meacham said Monday on MSNBC’s “The Beat” that the infrastructure bill signed into law today by President Joe Biden “will rank” in history with former President Dwight Eisenhower’s Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 that created America’s interstate highway system.
Anchor Ari Melber said, “What you see in the sweep of history, it’s hard to get a sense of it as we go in real-time, but when we look at the numbers, how rare or infrequent it is you get this national investment. I’m curious your thoughts on where this fits in long term.”
Meacham said, “Bill Clinton used to say a president is lucky to get a sentence. Lincoln saved the union, and FDR defeated the Depression, won World War II. Biden is well on his way to writing his sentence here. This is a significant investment in the country. It will rank, I think, with what President Eisenhower was doing in the 1950s. The fact that we’re still talking about President Eisenhower and what happened with the Interstate Highway Bill, I think, proves the point.”
He added, “It’s both good policy, and it’s good politics for President Biden. It’s an example where he got Republican votes for something, which is a vanishingly rare thing, like finding a pterodactyl somewhere. ”
Meacham added, “It’s not going to break the fever that’s on the right, but it might bring it down a little bit.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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