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There is no such thing as a popular American president. Now, everyone who takes office comes with the suspicion or ill will of almost half the electorate. Once the day-to-day wear and tear of governance begins, low approval ratings are natural and almost proof that a person is doing their job.
Joe Biden’s plight must be viewed in this context. His poor ratings must be weighed against the fact that it is almost impossible to be widely liked in such a divided country. Not since George HW Bush in 1988 has anyone won more than 400 of the 538 Electoral College votes (once a mediocre feat).
So Biden’s situation is not unique, let alone unsalvageable. But if he wants to recover, Democrats must understand his core issues. It’s not, or it’s not just old age. It’s not that – the eternal conceit of doomed governments around the world – they failed to “broadcast” his achievements.
Biden is over-interpreting his mission. While voters can’t write precise instructions on their ballots, we can infer from the margins of his win and the Democrats’ ability to retain Congress that 2020 was not a license to reinvent capitalism. His mission is to end Donald Trump’s dark carnival and lead the United States out of the pandemic. What happened next—massive spending and subsidies on a scale that might have shocked Gaullists—was more than shocking. It also allows Republicans to make a plausible link between government and rising consumer prices (even if you think it’s ultimately wrong).
Nothing exposes the generational divide between America’s leaders and the majority of people living in the United States more than inflation. The median American under the age of 40 had not directly experienced high inflation until 2021. Their lives coincided with a time of cheap Chinese imports and relative peace. By contrast, Biden, like other Washington luminaries of the same period, watched the oil crises of the 1970s come and go. He may not have imagined how traumatizing it would be for middle-aged and young people to see prices for basic commodities rise and savings depreciate.this yes Their first rodeo.
Since appearing arrogant in previous months, the president has become more sensitive to concerns about inflation. But members of his government still speak of a “new economic order” for the world with messianic rhetoric, as if rising prices are collateral damage in a grand experiment conducted on behalf of the people. The case for technological self-sufficiency in certain areas is not silly. But there’s a cloudy quality to the government that’s hard for Scranton’s straight-talkers to see.
Democrats point to the high poll numbers for most of their interventionist ideas. Do we have to go through this again? Policies that are popular individually may be unpopular in combination. What unsettles voters is the impression of a passionate, slamming ideological platform unless they have approved it in advance. Biden’s unapologetic nationalism has been compared to Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt. But those presidents, like Ronald Reagan, won overwhelming mandates.
From an ideological perspective, the Democratic Party is less Marxist than most parties on the left. They tend not to believe that our species is heading down some destined path, and (the grander conceit) that we can somehow know where we are on that path. However, this is changing. Even moderate American progressives are now saying that we have reached the end of the neoliberal phase, as if reading a Hegelian flow chart, and are now making neat dialectical counterattacks.
I would say this even if you have such a strict view of history. In the “neoliberal” era, the Republican Party has often suffered setbacks for misreading the public’s demand for markets (especially in health care and social security) – 1996, 2008, 2012. In other words, it’s possible for the mood of the times to be generally in your favor and still go too far. Just ask Paul Ryan. Although he speaks fluently on television, that’s not what he hopes to do.
Democrats seem to believe that the not-too-distant past was a Steinbeckian hellscape, filled with downtrodden workers and cackling bosses. It undermines not only their own records — Clinton, Obama — but the public’s memory. The neoliberal era included low inflation. It needs reform, not rupture. If Biden governs more moderately, it will be harder to frame him for high prices. There are presidents who tread water and presidents who make waves. It is the hallmark of a president to attempt a second term under the authority of the first.
janan.ganesh@ft.com
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