When Joe Biden was elected President of the United States, there were great hopes in much of the U.S. that the dark nightmare that Trump had created was now finished (at least temporarily). Unlike Trump, who had never been in government before becoming president, Biden had one of the longest resumes of political office of any president-elect in American history. Perhaps the longest.
Also, Biden had one of the most developed visions for where he wanted America to go of any president-elect. And in spite of an extremely fragile majority in the Senate, look at all the bills he has gotten passed. This week, the Inflation Reduction Bill was passed, which among other things is going to work for cheaper costs for prescription medicines for Americans as well as investments in fighting climate change.
He is getting much of his agenda passed in spite of having to deal with the Covid epidemic, having to deal with rampant inflation (which, by the way, he didn’t cause, as it is appearing on a global level), having to deal with the war in Ukraine and having to deal with an increasingly strident China. The Inflation Reduction Act, which was the prize of his agenda, has barely generated a bump in his political ratings, which as most of us know, have been extremely low. His ratings went up from 36% to 40%.
Some people blamed Biden for initially failing to get the Inflation Reduction Act passed. But Biden has only 50 Democrats in the Senate, and two of them, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, initially refused to sign up for it. They are Conservative Democrats who thought the bill was too liberal in its scope. It took a year for a compromise to be worked out between Biden and these two senators.
And so, he is not a good public speaker. Neither was Moses. And he has been caught plagiarizing for some of his speeches. Not a particularly good thing to do, but, in the larger scheme of things, certainly not a deal breaker. People are not focusing on his plagiarizing in terms of their rejection of him. They’re focusing on his handling of inflation (not his fault and not in his purview to really fix) and his handling of Covid. Which again is not his fault that it hasn’t been contained. It’s not Biden’s fault that so many Americans refuse to get vaccinated or that the Coronavirus is so susceptible to mutation. Or that Americans don’t want to wear masks indoors or practice social distancing. As for inflation, the bill might help to bring inflation down in a number of small ways. But the bill was not originally conceived as an inflation reduction bill. It was originally called the Build Back Better Act. And anyway, the main responsibility for bringing down inflation lies with the Federal Reserve. As has been stated, the final success of this bill has had little influence on changing how Biden is perceived. So, we must ask ourselves, what is really behind this sustained long-term disapproval of President Biden?
It gets back to numbness. People today like leaders who can help pull them out of numbness with abrasive stimuli. Leaders who are tough and who are capable of being nasty. People who are like all the tough authoritarian leaders that are coming to power in many of the democracies all over the world. By comparison, Biden seems too nice. Too soft and squishy. Too prone to compromise when it comes to getting his policies done. Biden is like the nice good suitor of a certain kind of woman. He comes off sweet, but he is lacking the kind of abrasive mean streak that comes off very exciting to some women. For that matter, there are some men who get very excited by an abrasive mean woman.
So, no matter how many accomplishments Biden racks up, numb people have difficulty absorbing them. And this is because they have become so numb, they are incapable of absorbing and appreciating the communing organic stimulation of Biden, the flowing, blendable, continual stimuli of a person like Biden, that leads to strong interpersonal bonding. No matter how many times Manchin shifted his public position on Biden’s largest bill, Biden never got so angry with Manchin that he cut off the possibility of continued behind-the-scenes negotiations with him. And it paid off. But to many Americans, this has been considered a sign of weakness.
I myself think that Biden is going to be thought of as one of the greatest presidents in American history. Not only for what he has accomplished but for all the unforeseen challenges he has had to struggle against. Trump, Covid, inflation, Ukraine. This is certainly more than any other modern president has had to confront at one time. And I don’t care how old he is when he assumes power for a second term, unless he becomes senile, which seems highly unlikely, he will continue to do more good for the country than any politician I can think of who is half his age.