Inflation’s killing us, interest rates are surging, the stock market’s sputtering. The country’s on the wrong track, and the gloom is palpable. Only 24% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going. The midterm election is going to be a nasty referendum on the president. Stick a fork in him, he’s done.
And yet Ronald Reagan rode out these 1981-1982 difficulties to win a landslide re-election. Similar narratives can describe the presidencies of two other chief executives. In the summer of 1993, just a quarter of Americans were satisfied with the way things were going. At the same point in 2010, even fewer, just one-fifth, were. And, yet, like Reagan, those presidents — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — cruised to solid reelection wins.
Stick a fork in Joe Biden? That’s the conventional wisdom. After all, according to the mother of all polls, Gallup, his approval is an anemic 41%. Yet at this stage of their presidencies, Reagan’s, Clinton’s and Obama’s approvals stood at 42%, 42% and 46%. Biden, statistically at least, is in the same boat.
But there’s one big difference between Biden and the others: Reagan, Clinton and Obama were far more skillful on the stage and behind the bully pulpit, as Theodore Roosevelt called it. Biden lacks their showmanship and oratorical gifts. In our superficial TV age where image is everything, these are political skills that cannot be overestimated, and here, the 79-year-old president falls short.
His presidency, critics say, has been a colossal flop. And, yet, imagine presiding over an economy that added a record 9.48 million jobs in a year and a half — more than the five and a half years before that combined. Unemployment is 3.6%. The fastest wage growth in more than a quarter-century. A $1.9 trillion package to help Americans get by during the worst pandemic in a century. The biggest infrastructure rebuild and first major gun law in decades. Nearly six dozen federal judges confirmed. And, for good measure, a sharp approval in America’s reputation on the global stage.
This, poll after poll tells us, is what a failed presidency looks like.
All presidents have an endless list of problems. Of Biden’s top two, one, as I see it, is largely beyond his control. The other is completely within it.
The problem that is largely beyond his control — or any president’s control — is inflation. The fed funds rate was a devastating 14% in November 1980, the final nail in the Carter presidency. After rising to 20% in the early stages of Reagan’s, Fed Chair Paul Volcker began easing as inflation fell. By November 1984, rates had been cut in half, a huge tailwind to the economy. If anyone deserved equal credit for the “Reagan recovery,” it was the cigar-chomping Mr. Volcker.
Biden says that controlling inflation is primarily the Fed’s responsibility. That’s technically true, but as a politician he’s the guy who has to answer for the consequences of its decisions. I’ll bet average Americans don’t know or care that Fed Chair Jerome Powell spent most of 2021 calling inflation “transitory.”
They do care, however, that it was the wrong analysis, and partially because of that, they’re being hammered by 9% inflation. But this is all Biden’s fault, because he’s the guy at the top. Doesn’t matter whether it’s fair. That’s how politics works.
There are signs that inflation may be easing. Commodity prices have fallen sharply over the past few weeks, and AAA says gasoline is now down 10% from its recent high. Question: If you blame Biden when gasoline is rising, whom do you credit when it falls?
The one problem that Biden could theoretically control (except he can’t because he’s Joe Biden) is his messaging. The above paragraph about jobs, jobs, jobs, rising wages, shiny new bridges and all the rest — why isn’t he talking this stuff up? These are real accomplishments. And, yet, what does he do? He has allowed himself to fall for the gloom. “Americans are really, really down,” he told the Associated Press last month.
Doesn’t this lifelong politician know that presidents set the tone? If he says things are crappy, well, that’s the quote that’s going to ricochet around the internet and on TV. He’s digging himself into his own hole with this undisciplined, ill-considered rhetoric. Midterm elections are always a referendum on the incumbent president. I’ll bet his “Americans are really, really down” line is going to show up in a few GOP ads, and if Biden seeks re-election in 2024, you can be damn sure it will.
What baffles me is that when you go into the Biden Oval Office, the biggest portrait hanging on the wall is of his hero, Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR came to the White House in 1933 at the very depth of the Great Depression. Unemployment was 25%. Incomes had been cut in half. Families lived in shacks. Things like unemployment insurance didn’t exist. “Brother, can you spare a dime?” one popular song asked. Millions of Americans couldn’t.
And yet Roosevelt was upbeat, famously telling Americans that the only thing they had to fear was fear itself. Yet Biden gives into the gloom. Big mistake. Optimism and confidence in the future — that’s what presidents should project.
The president needs to take a page from his hero’s playbook.
The deal would allow Ukraine to resume grain shipments to world markets and Russia to export grain and fertilizers, ending a standoff that threatened world food security.
Paul Brandus is a Washington-based columnist, author, broadcaster and keynote speaker. He has been a MarketWatch contributor since 2014 .
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