Quietly Fixing the Mess

Credit: Getty Images

Hello to the Steady community. First, I want to thank you for your passionate engagement. Comments on our last post, “One Man,” were prolific — some of the most ever for a Steady post. Naturally, I encourage more. While most comments were positive, a few of you asked why we chose to give so much copy to former President Trump’s failures rather than highlight President Biden’s accomplishments. 

In response, please allow me to say that we never take the position that we are right all of the time. We make mistakes. Journalism is a humbling craft. With that always in mind, we do the best we can.

But please know that any presidential candidate facing 91 felony indictments is going to get a lot of my attention. To ignore his behavior is to normalize it. 

That being said, it’s no secret that President Biden has struggled to gain traction for his political and legislative accomplishments. To understand why, let’s start at the very beginning.

The transition from one presidential administration to another is often judged by what kind of country the outgoing president leaves for his successor. When President Obama left office in January 2017, he handed incoming President Trump the reins of a country with a thriving economy. Four years later, President Biden took over a country whose economy was in questionable if not outright dangerous condition. By any reasonable analysis, America overall was in the worst shape it had been in for generations: economically, physically and psychologically. Yes, we were coming out of a pandemic, but one that Trump exacerbated by gross mismanagement, making President Biden’s job even harder. 

From day one, Biden was behind. But unlike Trump, he had a plan, an agenda that was more than simply undoing his predecessor’s policies. Biden is an old-school Democratic politician who believes it is the government’s job to help Americans. He isn’t flashy, and neither are his policy initiatives. But many have gotten the job done. For example, you probably don’t know about the thousands of infrastructure projects launched in the last three years that are currently rebuilding America. Clean water and road repair often don’t get the attention they deserve.

In January 2021, unemployment was at 6.4% — almost double what it is today. The employment rate was a paltry 57.4%, lower than during the recession of 2008. Consumption of goods and services was way down across the board. Yes, gas prices were low, but any Econ 101 student knows that is because demand was down during the pandemic. Few of us could go anywhere. Trump, of course, took credit for this slight positive and blamed Biden for the rise in gasoline prices when people started driving and flying again. Many economists say the subsequent surge in gas prices was made worse by a Trump-brokered deal to cut production during the pandemic. Then demand returned, and production couldn’t get going fast enough. 

By any measure, Biden’s first two years in office were some of the most productive in half a century. He guided the country out of a debilitating pandemic by funding testing, treatment, and a coordinated vaccination plan. He got the last U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. (That should and could have been done less chaotically. But at least it got done.) He passed massive spending bills that have transformed the social safety net: bringing down inflation, fixing the country’s crumbling infrastructure, getting back on track to curtail climate change, and forgiving student loan debt. He reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act and even got (very) modest gun reform through Congress. 

Admittedly, the second half of his term has not been as productive. That is in large part because he has been stymied by a fractured, Republican-led (I use that term loosely) House of Representatives. But the work he was able to do during the first two years has paid off. The recession so many were predicting hasn’t come to pass. Instead, the economy is booming, driven by high consumer spending. According to The Washington Post, “Government policy played an important role in supporting the economy last year. The Biden administration’s efforts to fund new infrastructure and clean energy projects have created new jobs and spurred $640 billion in private investments around the country.” The child poverty rate is down. Inflation is in check. 

We return to the question: Why isn’t Biden getting more credit, or any at all? Why do polls show that many Americans don’t know about his successes, and when told, are angry they didn’t know? 

One reason is that grocery prices and the cost of home buying, about which people are reminded daily, remain high. Another is that immigration remains a high-profile, dangerous mess, and Biden has been ineffective in dealing with it.

But it is also true that we live in a clickbait, “gotcha” world where screaming and riling people up has become the norm, the expectation. Trump is cash money for media companies. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. And good old-fashioned governing isn’t as interesting to audiences. It doesn’t break through the noise — and there is a lot of noise. All of which helps Trump and hurts Biden.

None of this necessarily means Biden’s reelection chances are doomed. There is still a long way to go, and much is unpredictable. What we’ve tried to do with this post is perhaps add a little perspective about the campaign to this point.  

Here at Steady, we hope we can help keep the conversation going about what is real and what is bluster.

Please feel free to join in the conversation below.

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