The Two Joe Bidens: Performer and Policymaker

 

By David K. Shipler 

              Every modern president needs acting skills alongside constructive policies. It’s not enough to run the government and shape the affairs of state.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt mobilized and comforted Americans through his wartime fireside chats on the radio. Harry Truman projected a down-home frankness. Dwight Eisenhower combined a victorious general’s solidarity with a quiet posture of visionary decency. John F. Kennedy used inspirational rhetoric, self-deprecating humor, and the demeanor of royalty. Lyndon Baines Johnson’s flattery and threats worked miracles in Congress to pass civil rights bills, which his display of passionate conviction helped sell to the country at large.

Richard Nixon lacked acting ability, though, and he looked bad on television. Gerald Ford failed to exude strength. Jimmy Carter had a whiny voice and too much honesty about America’s malaise. Ronald Reagan’s acting profession gave him perfect timing, witty quips, and a persuasive illusion of warm sincerity.

George H. W. Bush was a verbal fumbler and gave an impression of much less gravitas than his solid policy credentials warranted. Bill Clinton had a silver tongue and an infectious charm. George W. Bush seemed like a nice guy you could enjoy having a beer with. Barack Obama’s eloquence first carried him into national politics, and then into the White House, where his oratory stirred idealism among large numbers of citizens. Donald Trump’s direct insults, saying aloud the ugly things that many Americans thought, conveyed an image of brutal candor even as he spewed incessant lies, a technique that still mesmerizes millions.

              And now, Joe Biden. He personifies the dissonance between the performative and policy dimensions of the presidency. His approval ratings have plummeted even among voters who agree with him on major issues. The policies he supports don’t seem to matter; his manner of presentation is everything.

He is not a forceful orator, there is no song in his lyrics. He is, perhaps, too calm for the moment, even when he tries to hammer home a point or use sharp language. He fumbles, he digresses, he misspeaks—an ailment left over from his youthful stuttering—and does not excite. At 79, he acts his age and does not project the charismatic strength that many Americans seem to value, especially in a time of tension and hardship. He is often described as “weak.”

              Yet his supposed “weakness” is a mirage. In practice he has been as tough as nails in foreign policy, extremely ambitious domestically, and an activist user of executive power to further a liberal agenda—to the extent that the courts will allow.

That is not to say that all his policies deserve unanimous applause, nor that they have been free of colossal failure. “Weakness” seemed to be graphically illustrated by the precipitous, mismanaged withdrawal from Afghanistan, based on the misreading by U.S. intelligence of how long the Kabul government could hold off the Taliban. His administration’s immigration policy—is there a policy?—is a tangle that had a sensible idea that has been inadequately pursued: to help Latin American countries address the violence and economic catastrophes driving people north.

But Biden has been resolute in critical areas: Russia, China, and Iran, for example. He has not conceded Russian President Vladimir Putin an inch since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Where the tougher-seeming Trump disparaged and undermined the North Atlantic Alliance, Biden has done the opposite: mobilized NATO allies to pour weapons into Ukraine, lined up a broad array of other countries to sanction Moscow economically, and aimed to make the war costly enough for Russia to deter future aggression.

Biden has also named Putin as a war criminal. Overall, the American approach might lack nuance and finesse, since there will still be a Russia to engage with after the war. But weak? Hardly.

His administration has also focused on China as a growing danger to American interests. He has tried to revive the nuclear treaty with Iran but also threatened military action to prevent Teheran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Weak? Reckless, maybe, but not weak.

So, when Biden’s public manner on TV deviates from his concrete practice, he is being misread. Domestically, progressives are rightly frustrated by Democrats’ inability to enact their policies, but they often misplace the blame. Biden has applied intense efforts to advance a liberal agenda, thwarted mostly by Republicans in Congress but also by some in his own Democratic Party. He managed to get through a colossal infrastructure bill to make up for decades of national neglect—deferred maintenance of bridges, roads, ports, and the like—and stimulus payments to rescue millions of Americans from the aftershock of the pandemic.

Indeed, the ingredients of Biden’s low approval scores among progressives include a reality he can’t control: the political polarization that reinforces obstreperous Republicans in their opposition to anything that gives the Democratic president an achievement. And how they have succeeded by blocking expansive legislation on climate change, voting rights, child tax credits, food and housing subsidies, and other important social justice measures.

The good old days of Lyndon Johnson buttonholing recalcitrant legislators and cajoling, warning, and wooing them his way are long gone. Even getting the vote of one of Biden’s own Democrats, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, is like trying to nail a custard pie to the wall. You think you’ve got him, and then he oozes away.

Then there’s the weird economy with unemployment low, inflation high, job creation going like gangbusters, the stock market stumbling, and Americans worried sick. It’s a perfect storm of the pandemic’s aftermath: disrupted supply lines, a flood of government stimulus, a surge of pent-up demand, hoarding by manufacturers afraid they won’t get essential components, and of course the war in Ukraine and its impact of energy prices. There’s nothing to stoke the summer of discontent like those big numbers on every gas station’s signs. You can’t miss them.

But is the president responsible? Economists like to say that when the economy is good, the president gets more credit than he deserves, and when it’s bad, he gets more criticism than he deserves. The White House has very few levers it can pull—Biden released oil from the nation’s strategic reserves to increase supply and dampen prices, and recently fist-bumped with the vilified Saudi leader to urge him to raise production.

Otherwise, though, Americans who blame the president for the inflation seem to forget that we live in a private, free-market system, not a socialist, government-command economy. Do they want  a country where the president has so much control that they can legitimately hold him responsible when things go sour? I don’t think so.

Then, too, if you have to choose, would you rather have a president who’s a skilled practitioner of good government, or a talented actor? Remember the demagogue with stage presence we got last time? And might get next time?