It's one of the oddest stories in presidential history: on October 2nd., 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke so devastating that it left him in bed for weeks. During his incapacitation, his wife Edith had so much influence over his communications that some called her the first female president. Amazingly, Wilson continued as president for over a year without completely recovering.
Decades later, when former President Ronald Reagan was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, there were many whispers about how he had started showing signs of that affliction as early as the mid 1980's. Years later, former President Donald Trump spent the first two years of his presidency watching hours of TV and tweeting everyday, along with many rounds of golf or holding rallies in which he made random remarks entirely off the cuff.
I'm telling these stories to make a point; although we use lofty terms to describe the president in this country (the leader of the free world, the most powerful man in the world, the commander in chief), there is a certain automatic pilot quality to the president. That is, the president has so many cabinet members and advisors, not to mention people planning out his schedule, that he can just cruise from one document signing or meeting to another without ever really doing a whole heck of a lot of work himself. Even if the president blurts out the wrong thing at the wrong time in front of a camera, there are press agents and media types who will massage his words to fit the actual policy.
Now, am I saying that this job is easy? Of course not, just look at how much Barack Obama seemed to age between 2008 and 2012! But this really depends on the president himself; Obama showed the wear and tear of the job because he truly wanted to make changes, which took numerous amounts of policy meetings and negotiations. Trump didn't show the strain of the office because he was mostly in it for himself, and he quickly realized shortly after taking office that he could just let everyone around him do the hard work, while he watched TV. (This system actually seemed to work for him until the coronavirus revealed his utterly incompetent nature). In other words, it's the president's choice as to just how hands on he will be.
But then there's another factor: luck. Much of the perceived success or failure of a presidency lies on the hands they're dealt when they're in office. Bill Clinton, for example, came into office in 1992 when the cold war was over and rise of the internet caused huge economic growth, leading to a time of peace and prosperity. The fact he didn't do anything to create the conditions necessary for that peace and prosperity didn't matter. He still reaped the benefit, easily winning a second term in office. He was, like I said, lucky.
I used to think that Barack Obama, inheriting the disastrous Iraq war and the worst economy since the depression had the worst luck as a first term president. But poor Joe Biden has him beat. Just look at yet another devastating recent poll in the New York Times, showing a majority of registered Democrats not wanting him to run for a second term, partly because of his age, but also because of his job performance. There is a perception that Biden is out of touch with the needs of the average voter and a desire that he is not doing enough about runaway inflation and high gas prices. But the sad fact of the matter is that there is very little that he can do about those things.
I don't think the American public gets the idea of just what the world has gone through in the past few years: the first global pandemic in over a 100 years, and the first war in Europe in over 80. The pandemic drove up demand for physical goods as people stayed home and bought things online, driving up the prices. The fractured supply lines both here and in other countries also lead to product shortages, another source of inflation. And Russia's invasion of Ukraine has deeply effected the global economy; Ukraine is one the world's biggest exporters of wheat, and the war has inevitably greatly reduced the country's ability to make those exports, driving up food prices. Meanwhile, attempts to reduce oil exports from Russia has lead to increased oil prices globally.
If Joe Biden were lucky, he could be an autopilot president and take credit for good times, like Trump did for his first two years in office. But because he took office at a historically bad time for the world, Biden has been beset with low approval ratings within months of taking office (February of 2022, when Vladamir Putin started the invasion of Ukraine, was when things got bad for him).
None of this is to say that I think Biden should be left off the hook, not at all. He (and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen) should have seen the inflation problem coming. And his inability to get his economic agenda passed through congress has made him look weak. But the public's anger and desire to take out high prices on him is mostly just plain bad luck. And it looks like it will make him a one term president.
No comments:
Post a Comment