Vaccination against timidity

President Joe Biden has been in office for just over two weeks, and if there has ever been a new president under tighter surveillance for any sign of straying from the path of righteousness, I can’t remember it. From both inside and outside the administration, huge numbers of people are on guard to make sure that Biden doesn’t even think about breaking promises or repeating the mistakes of the past.

So far it looks to be working.

To use a timely metaphor, it appears that the Biden administration has developed powerful antibodies against infection by bad ideas and suboptimal personnel, especially ones from the Barack Obama years that in retrospect look far worse than they did 12 years ago. It’s not that Biden won’t be exposed, but when he is, a strong immune system kicks into gear to fight off the assault.

Let’s take a case study. Lawrence Summers, one of the best-known Democratic economists — he held senior posts in the last two Democratic administrations — wrote an op-ed for The Post arguing that the $1.9 trillion covid relief bill Democrats are in the process of crafting could be too large.

While he expressed support for its goals, Summers warned that it might “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation” and passing it could sap dollars and drain will from efforts to address other progressive priorities.

Lots of economists have rejected Summers’ inflation worries. As for the second argument, it’s essentially a claim about “political capital,” an idea we really ought to do away with completely. It presumes that a president comes into office with a finite amount of capital he can spend, and passing one important bill reduces his ability to pass other important bills.

This is just not true. Indeed, in this case passing a relief bill that actually improves people’s lives, helping the pandemic and the economic crisis end more quickly, will give Biden and Democrats more ability to pass other items on their agenda.

But what’s most notable is the immediate and fierce pushback Summers got, from both inside and outside the administration, which communicated the fact that the administration isn’t being influenced by Summers’ argument.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi clarified that in her Friday meeting with the president, “We did not talk about Larry Summers.” And Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, tweeted, “Why would we listen to the economist who admits he went too small last time if he’s warning us to go small again?”

As it happens, a lot of people on the left dislike Summers for a variety of reasons, only some of which have to do with the fact that he’s remembered as an advocate of pinched ambitions in the Obama years. You could say the same about Rahm Emanuel, who was Barack Obama’s first chief of staff. Emanuel’s name keeps being leaked as a potential appointee — first for secretary of transportation, then for ambassador to China — and each time, the pushback from the left is intense.

There are many reasons for this, but importantly, people remember that in the Obama years, Emanuel was a regular voice for dialing back ambitions in deference to the backlash from moderates he always feared. Perhaps most famously, after Sen. Ted Kennedy died, depriving Senate Democrats of the 60th vote to overcome a Republican filibuster on health care reform, Emanuel advocated splitting the bill into smaller pieces and trying to pass them.

He got shut down by Pelosi, who told Obama, “Mr. President, I know there are some on your staff who want to take the namby-pamby approach.” Instead, she got the House to pass a version of the bill that had already passed the Senate, and Obamacare became the greatest legislative achievement of his presidency.

Biden has managed his left flank with unexpected skill, showing progressives he values their ideas and keeping them inside the tent. They’re still vigilant, watching out for disturbing appointments and policy walkbacks, but so far they’ve had much less to complain about than one might have predicted given that Biden explicitly ran in the 2020 primaries as a moderate.

There may never be a moment when no one is telling this administration to dial back its ambitions and be more afraid of backlash. But so far, they seem to have vaccinated themselves against it.