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.

Biden’s Housing Plan as a Key to Children’s Futures

 

By David K. Shipler 

                Let’s assume that Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are decent people, not callous to children in poverty. That would mean that they’re merely clueless. They are not connecting the dots. As they insist on slashing President Biden’s proposed $322 billion in housing subsidies, they cannot possibly understand how much lifelong damage that will do to kids.

                 Biden and the Democratic leaders are trying to break a key link in the chain reaction of poverty. Housing is that link. Without government aid, high rents leave less money for food, leading to malnutrition, parental stress, and disrupted living, all of which can impair brain development in young children. The scientific and social research has been clear on this for decades. Yet the connections are rarely recognized by legislators and officials—and journalists as well—who persistently treat each problem and government program as separate and distinct, with little regard for the web of interactions among the hardships that struggling families face.

                In many parts of the country, the private housing market is brutal for low-wage workers. Nationwide, households in the bottom 20 percent spend a median 56 percent of their income on rent.  The rest of their monthly funds are committed to paying for electricity, water, phone, heat, car loans, and the like. What they can shrink is the part of their budget for food. And without proper nutrition during critical periods of early life, children suffer cognitive impairment that is not undone even if food security is later restored. [See A Hungry Child’s First Thousand Days in Washington Monthly.]

                Stress is also a factor in brain development, researchers have found. Even if a family doesn’t become homeless but lives with constant tension over paying the rent and other bills, the anxiety can be absorbed by children, both in utero and after birth. Imagine—if you can—the anxiety of parents who have too little food for their children, for feeding offspring is a most elemental instinct and duty.

Furthermore, children’s biological and mental health is damaged when families have to move repeatedly or reside in poor housing with lead in the water from old pipes, roaches and mold that trigger asthma attacks, and overcrowding that causes household friction.

                The study of stress has been a significant addition to the understanding of the environmental impacts on the brain, to the point where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) devotes an entire website to updating research on risks and prevention. In its list of what scientists in a seminal study call Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), the CDC includes housing issues along with more obvious traumas such as suffering neglect and witnessing violence or suicide.