Biden. New and Improved!
"Trouble, trouble, trouble (oh)
Oh, oh
Trouble, trouble, trouble
I knew you were trouble when you walked in
Trouble, trouble, trouble."
Taylor Swift, "I knew you were Trouble," 2020
This is the summer of our discontent, but Joe Biden didn't start the trouble.
Like Taylor Swift sings, it was there when Biden came into office. Attitudes are still stuck in the Covid-era past. That is over. Times are good.
Biden's job is to get people to feel that in their minds and hearts.
American has been losing its cultural glue, its cohesion. It isn't just government, where voters give Congress an 8% favorability rating. Every institution -- religious, academic, police, business, banking -- has seen a decline in support and trust.
Pundits speculate why the negativity. Some point to the successful message tactic of Newt Gingrich, led by the linguist-strategist Frank Luntz. They advised Republicans, don't refer to Democrats as opponents; call them enemies. Don't say they are wrong; say they are disgusting. The tactic worked. It coarsens American politics.
Others point to the failure of bipartisan faith in markets. In this construction, the Clintons, Al Gore, and Obama are approximately equal participants with Reagan, Gingrich, and Romney. They all believed in Wall Street Journal capitalism, the righteous verdict of the bond market, free trade, NAFTA, and open borders. Free markets create a problem for democracy. There are too many losers, too many people squeezed by hard bargains. Angry, frustrated people don't quietly disappear. They suffer, they look for someone to blame, and leaders come along who address that frustration. Leaders on the left point to corporate elites who get wealthy at the expense of the forgotten people. Leaders on the right point to foreigners, immigrants, fake media, and to elections where the wrong candidate wins.
Others blame technology. Everyone can communicate to the world. Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist, and blogs like this one means the glue of information curation disappeared. Of course Americans believe wild conspiracies. They are in our news feeds.
Joe Biden won office by being the plausible alternative to Trump. Biden represented a return to "normalcy." In fact -- and this is hard to see amid the fog of political vitriol and misdirection -- Biden is a departure from the Reagan-Clinton-Romney-Obama world. He adopted Trump's economic message, deleting the xenophobia and authoritarianism. Trump talked about an America-first industrial policy but didn't change industrial policy. The CHIPS Act does change it, for real. Against criticism that America is "picking winners and losers," which it is, it is using the government to re-establish a vital industry back in the U.S. and putting it in rustbelt places, Ohio and upstate New York. The U.S. government is rebuilding transportation and broadband infrastructure amid charges of "Socialism!" and "Wasteful spending!" Democrats don't see it and Republican politicians don't admit it, but Biden has largely adopted Trump's border policy as regards sham asylum seekers.
Meanwhile, the economy has rebounded. We are back to pre-Covid normal. Unemployment is low and inflation is abating. The economy is good. Yet discontent remains. Economic confidence is at the level of 2008 when there was, indeed, a profound crisis. Banks were toppling, money funds stopped being reliable storehouse of value, the economy was shrinking. There was good reason to lose confidence. Yet we are back near those levels according to Gallup polling.
By a three-to-one margin people think things are getting worse for America's economy:
Americans aren't generalizing from their own eyes and ears. Look at the disconnect:
Joe Biden does not look or sound like a change agent, but he is one. He is re-steering the economy toward industrial policies intended to return high-value-added manufacturing to the U.S. It is the Trump story, implemented by Biden. But change isn't Biden's brand. One cannot separate the message from the messenger. An old man cannot be cast in the role of Juliet. He wouldn't be believable. Biden will have a hard time communicating to voters that he has already changed American economic policy, but that is his task in the months ahead.
He is an old dog implementing new tricks.