When FDR took office in 1933, the Great Depression had been going on for four years. There was never any chance he would take the blame for it. When Obama took office, however, the stock market crash was only a few months old, and most of the pain had yet to be felt. The GOP consequently succeeded, to some extent, in associating him with the Great Recession. You will probably hear some of that theme in Trump’s commercials in the upcoming campaign.
So what happens this time? If Biden wins, and the country recovers slowly over the next few years, will he get the credit for the improvement, or the blame for the initial problem? My guess is that the timing of the crash is more reminiscent of the Great Depression than the Great Recession; the image fixed in the public’s mind will be of Trump behaving erratically at daily briefings, not anything Biden might do subsequently. I could be wrong about that, however. We’ll see.