Biden could use some of Trump’s agility

For anyone with sincere and absolute convictions on abortion, anti-abortion or abortion rights, Donald Trump’s attempts to reposition himself this past week should be somewhere between depressing and infuriating.

For anti-abortion advocates, the problem is the cynicism — the reminder that Trump is purely transactional in his relationship to their ideals, and a willing betrayer when politics requires it.

For abortionrights supporters, the problem is the chutzpah — the man who did so much to overturn Roe v. Wade trying to disavow responsibility for its policy consequences.

But Trump’s cynicism is also one of his political strengths. What he does crudely, with naked calculation and comic transparency, is what successful politicians used to do more normally: triangulate between your base and the general public, make showy moves to reassure swing voters that you’re not just an ideologue, suggest that you’re willing to negotiate when public opinion is against you.

Trump often does this with symbolism rather than substance, with dishonest framings of his own record and promised policy innovations that don’t actually materialize. But still, he does it all the time, not just on social issues like abortion. The public doesn’t like his opposition to Obamacare? Next thing you know he’s promising to mend the program rather than end it. Middle-of-the-road voters seem uneasy about Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip? There’s Trump, Mr. Israel in his first term, suddenly sounding notes of caution and concern.

What’s nonnegotiable with Trump are his personal grievances, his amour propre, his election fraud narratives, his authoritarian style. That kind of intransigence is his major political weakness (in addition to being a source of danger for the

country). But on policy, he’s always ready to perform flexibly, even if there isn’t a clear plan underneath the posturing.

This has long made a contrast with more doctrinaire Republican politicians, which is part of why Trump beat them in 2016 and again in 2024. But it also makes a contrast with Joe Biden, who struggles to demonstrate policy independence from his party’s activists.

In part, Biden is unlucky in the challenges confronting him: The place where he is clearly trying to triangulate, the Israelhamas war, divides his own coalition in a way that makes every possible balancing act anger more people than it pleases.

But his administration has also consistently missed more plausible opportunities for outreach. You see this on issues like abortion and youth gender transitions. You see this on immigration. And you especially see it on environmental issues, where the White House is reluctant to put any clear distance between itself and climate activists.

One explanation for this pattern is that Biden’s White House is staffed by progressive ideologues who don’t have an instinct for moderation and don’t give their boss enough freedom to maneuver. Another explanation is that Biden’s team is deathly afraid of the progressive impulse toward self-sabotage, the willingness of left-wing factions to sit the election out or cast a protest vote.

I don’t think the latter fear is ungrounded. (Ralph Nader really did cost the Democrats a presidential election, after all.) But there’s a difference between being aware of your base and being its prisoner.

The greater freedom that Trump enjoys has roots in some dark places — cynicism, conservative tribalism, a populist indifference to policy detail. But it’s still a freedom that Biden sorely needs.