The single most common criticism of President Biden’s reelection campaign is that he made a ghastly error by branding his policies “Bidenomics.” Americans think the economy is terrible, and Democrats have been begging the president to stop branding himself as the architect of something that people hate.
I think this advice is wrong. Biden needs to change the public’s view on the economy if he’s going to win.
If “be a leader” means “inspire the masses”, then your expectations are too high. Each party gets an inspiring leader roughly once a generation. We had FDR in the 1940s, Kennedy in the 1960s, Clinton in the 1990s, and Obama in 2010s. The bad guys had Reagan in the 1980s, GWB (arguably) in the 2000s, and Trump today. If Democrats are lucky we will see someone with that ability in the 2030s or 2040s.
When we are waiting for a unicorn to show up, Democrats need someone who knows how to advance a legislative agenda, like LBJ (or, for the other team, like Nixon). And inspiring the masses does not necessarily overlap with that. Clinton was smart and charmed many Americans, but he failed to advance much. If anything his signature welfare reform was a step backwards and his health care reform was a complete bomb. Kennedy can take credit for the Civil Rights Act. Obama advanced health care reform.
That’s right, by “advance a legislative agenda” I mean an incremental - yet permanent - step forward on a single topic. That’s what actual progress looks like in the US. No president since FDR has ever made major progress on multiple issues, and it took FDR four terms to become the exception. And by “incremental”, I mean some things will always be left undone. Before Obama, insurance companies could refuse to cover sick people, drop them in the middle of treatment, or jack up their premiums. After Obama, they can’t do any of those things. But we still don’t have a public option.
If your expectations are realistic, then Biden has done a fine job. He passed the IRA, which does far more to tackle climate change than anyone who came before. As a bonus, he managed to get us through COVID without starting the recession that everyone said was inevitable. And he even moved health care a little further along by capping drug prices. That’s not “impotent” by any means, especially for just a single term.
Oh, and if “being a leader” means “not doing controversial things in an unpleasant war” then I have bad news for you. Every modern president from both parties has done that, from Truman’s atomic bombings to Obama’s drone strikes. That’s just a permanent feature of the American presidency.