A frustrated president struggles with his limitations
It was one of those moments — no, actually two — when you couldn’t help but say: Wow, if Joe Biden is that bereft of a clue, Democrats are headed for an unhappy new year. Just before Thanksgiving, according to The Washington Post, the president met with his campaign team and delivered “some stern words” to those assembled: “His poll numbers were unacceptably low and he wanted to know what his team and his campaign were doing about it,” the Post wrote.
The second occurred as Biden left the White House for a Camp David Christmas. Asked by a reporter about the economy, the president replied, “All good. Take a look. Start reporting it the right way.”
Those are the frustrated comments of a president who has lost control of the political narrative and doesn’t know how to reclaim it.
In June, I wondered in a column if Biden could imitate the post-recession Ronald Reagan of 1984 and make the case that it was “Morning in America” again. So far, the answer is no. He has the raw material, but honestly, it’s not clear that he has the ability.
Biden begins this election year with what should be a reasonably good hand. The US economy has so far avoided the recession many economists feared would come as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to cool inflation. Unemployment is low, job creation solid. Inflation has eased. Gas prices are down sharply.
The darkest cloud in that generally summery summary is that, apart from the pump, many of the cost spikes remain a part of people’s lives. That is, prices may not be rising rapidly any longer but they haven’t returned to preCOVID-19 levels.
That baked-in budgetary bite is one reason the public isn’t yet convinced that things are getting better.
The same disparity is true on crime. FBI data show that violent crime dropped dramatically, perhaps even historically, in 2023.
Yet three-quarters of the public think violent crime is on the rise.
Meanwhile, Biden is bearing the burden for the worsening situation on the southern border. This president does not, as Republicans perpetually claim, have an open border policy. But when Democratic mayors and governors start declaring that their ability to accommodate migrants is at the breaking point, the issue has obviously entered the political danger zone.
Question: Does the average person have any idea what the Biden team is trying to do to control the situation?
Then there’s the widespread feeling that Biden has been so affected by age that he isn’t up to another term. That, too, is a danger-zone issue: If that sentiment reaches the stage where people figuratively take the phone off the hook, he won’t be able to counter that notion.
All that has left some Democrats fearing that disaster may loom.
“I think Biden could easily now lose the Electoral College,” veteran Democratic political consultant Neil Oxman said, giving public voice to what others fret about privately.
The task of communicating is vexing in an era when citizens can and do choose their news sources and sociopolitical silos to fit their political leanings. But any effective communications effort requires a near-permanent campaign not just to convey but to inculcate a message — and the president himself must quarterback that effort, in regular news conferences and interactions with the media in all its many forms.
Biden, however, is one of the least message-advancing presidents in modern memory. Averse to press conferences and tetchy when questioned about his son Hunter, he holds few of them. His occasional interactions with the media as he departs the White House, meanwhile, tend to leave him looking old, slow-moving, and, as far as his economic comment was concerned, cranky.
Further, Biden only infrequently resorts to a mode of communication that was such an effective arrow in the presidential quivers of Reagan and Barack Obama: The big speech that at least temporarily sets the topic of national discussion.
We are about to witness another attempt at that, a Jan. 6 speech symbolically set near Valley Forge, which will mark a shift from emphasizing “Bidenomics” to the threat that Trump’s return to office would present.
“The question is, can the Biden campaign scare enough people about what will happen to the country to overcome concerns about electing an 82-year-old president?” Oxman said.
Given Trump’s seminal role in the violent Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol, it’s a vital subject. Yet the shift also serves as an implicit concession that Biden’s attempt to peddle his economic record hasn’t yet paid off.
He has to find a way to do both, for as this election year commences, many Americans seem more preoccupied with pocketbook concerns than with the protection of our democracy.
Biden is one of the least message-advancing presidents in modern memory.