President Joe Biden: Unexpectedly better than anticipated

Serendipitously pre-scheduled for a week featuring Biden discourse

Everyone likes to write about Donald Trump. It’s easy to write about Donald Trump. But this piece isn’t about Donald Trump, but about Joe Biden.

First, a word of context. Although I’m on the political right in the UK, if I lived in the US I’d be a swing voter. Both the Republicans and the Democrats have some things about them I like, and also support things I strongly dislike. I suspect I’d have voted for George W Bush and then for Barack Obama - and at State and Congressional levels it would depend heavily on the individual candidate.

That being said, at the time of the last Presidential election, I was far from enthused about the choice on offer. Whilst Biden seemed marginally preferable to Trump¹, it was very much only marginal. There were two main reasons for this:

• He’s in his 80s. I know many octogenarians, and for most part they are lovely people, but there’s nary a one of them I’d want to have their finger on the nuclear button.

• This was 2020, when large parts of the left had spent most of the year very visibly losing their minds over COVID-19² and Black Lives Matter.

It was not pleasant to hope for a Democratic victory.

But now, almost four years on, things look very different. It’s always difficult to judge another country’s politics: as a foreigner, one inevitably puts more of an emphasis on foreign policy³ and on macroeconomic performance as this is what stands out. But it seems clear that on a number of major indicators, Biden has significantly exceeded - at least my - expectations.

• He ended COVID restrictions relatively promptly, in May 2021 - only three months after the UK and broadly in line with many other democratic nations. He has not sought to reintroduce them.

• He has been a staunch friend to Ukraine in standing up to Russia’s invasion⁴, delivering significant amounts of aid and weaponry.

• The American economy is booming. Seriously, the way in which the US economy has decoupled from the UK and EU economies is startling - and it’s starting to become really noticeable in things such as comparing salaries. In 2020 and 2021, I’d read economic analyses of the US, on the impact of the COVID pandemic, inflation, growth and so on and the analysis tracked very strongly with what was happening in the UK. Now, they could be talking about two different countries⁵.

  

  A strong economy is not only a core duty of any national leader, but a strong economy helps the whole West - both because America remains by default the leader of the ‘free world’, and for the more prosaic reason that greater US demand for goods boosts everyone else’s economy.

• How’s he achieved this economic miracle?

  • He passed The Inflation Reduction Act, which has directed hundreds of billions of dollars into domestic energy production through loans and subsidies - including renewables, electric vehicles, gas pipelines and all kinds of factories that support this - catalysing potentially $3.3 trillion of investment. This is one of the largest interventions ever directed at economic growth, American industry and American jobs.

  • He’s not got in the way of the Federal Reserve doing its thing to bring down inflation.

  • Through the IRA and other policies, he’s followed a strategy of energy abundance - both increasing oil and gas production to record levels (the US is a net exporter of oil and gas now) and, as described above, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into subsidising renewables, meaning that carbon emissions are falling significantly. Together, that does three things: it keeps America’s economy strong (cheap energy → economic growth); it weakens the global power of petro-states, including Russia and OPEC nations; and it helps the planet - because those renewables are steadily displacing fossil fuels (carbon emissions were down 1.9% last year, while the economy grew by over 2%), even as domestic fossil fuels have displaced imports.

• He’s maintained Trump’s policy of recognising China as an economic and geopolitical rival - but has done so more effectively. The CHIPS Act was a genuine strike at the Chinese semiconductor industry - and as described above, the Inflation Reduction Act is serious effort to reverse US de-industrialisation.

• He’s been a staunch defender of Israel - despite the brick-bats and pressure being applied by many in his own party⁶. His adroitness at handling Hezbollah, preventing a major conflict breaking about between Hezbollah and Israel, has also been impressive.

• He’s capped payments for insulin at £35 a month, and done a number of other good things to make healthcare more affordable. The US pays vastly more as a share of GDP for healthcare than any other nation - without better outcomes - and things which make this more affordable are good in my book.

• Unemployment remains low at 3.7% and the stock market is reaching record highs.

As an outsider, I always forget how much that happens in the US is outside the President’s control. The single biggest thing to happen in the US over the last four years is almost certainly the overturning of Roe vs Wade - but whatever you think about that, Biden had nothing to do with it. And education is not a federal matter, so California can go on trashing its maths teaching in the name of ‘equity’ and North Carolina pushing back against critical race theory regardless of who is in the White House.

I think - after 10 years of gridlock - I did genuinely underestimate how much difference having an ultra-experienced legislator and deal-maker in the Oval Office would make. But I also think we should all be genuinely surprised that an 80 year old who clearly isn’t at the peak of his cognitive faculties has accomplished so much, against the backdrop of a deeply polarised nation and a global pandemic. I don’t know how he does it - whether he’s better in private than in public, whether key advisers are taking a lot of the calls, or what - but it seems to be working.

Don’t get me wrong: I can see the flaws, too. He’s been too soft on Iran; his student debt cancellation programme was regressive, inflationary and ill-targeted; he’s indulged ‘wokery’ across the board; the IRA is significantly weaker than it could be due to cumbersome labour and ownership provisions; he’s not increased ammunition production nearly fast enough⁷; his sentimentality to Ireland have made him needless hostile to the UK, Brexit and a mutually beneficial trade agreement - and I have serious concerns about his age. I’m sure that if I actually lived in the US I’d be able to name plenty more annoying, stupid or frustrating things that he’s done - and that there are plenty of people, both Republicans and Democrats, who’d make a better President⁸.

But from this Brit’s perspective, at the President’s core job of keeping the US economy strong, supporting its allies and standing up to its rivals, he’s done a pretty good job.

1. I neither like nor admire Trump, and do not think he deserves to be President again. That said, although he wasn’t a good President, I don’t suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome: America did well enough during his Presidency, and he didn’t get everything wrong. My major worry - and it is a big worry - if he were elected this November would be him ending support to Ukraine.

2. I am strongly pro-vaccine and am not someone who thinks there should have been no restrictions. But the scale and duration of lockdown restrictions many were pushing for (and indeed implemented, in many countries) I thought - and still think - was unjustifiable, and as for those who were pushing for permanent changes to our way of life, in response to a disease with a similar fatality rate to measles (vaccine only invented in 1963), I found that abhorrent.

3. Particularly with the US, given its global impact.

4. The current hold-ups are being caused by Congress, not Biden.

5. Which, indeed, they are.

6. Sure, if I wanted to I could quibble at the odd thing he’s said and done. But when a political leader takes such a principled stand, against a not insignificant wing of his own party, in a way that will likely lose him votes in an election year, then quibbling is not something I’m going to do.

7. Though neither has almost anyone else, Britain included.

8. Sadly, the person he’s likely to face is not one of those people.