24 United States The Economist February 12th 2022
Messingup,Bidenstyle
B
oris johnson turns out to have been running a 10 Downing
Street operation resembling himself: chaotic, rulebreaking,
fond of a tipple. The prime minister could hardly have done other
wise. Governments invariably reflect the style and character of
their leader. The Platonic city was a simulacrum of its ruler’s soul.
The medieval body politic was synonymous with the king’s own
body. American administrations, headquartered in a government
office that (like Downing Street) is also a family home, are pro
foundly in this tradition.
George W. Bush’s White House was, like the man himself,
cheerily upbeat and brutishly antiintellectual, preferring action
to deliberation. Barack Obama’s was cerebral, slick and selfre
garding. Donald Trump’s administration makes the Johnson oper
ation look like a Quaker tea party. Joe Biden’s is a huge improve
ment on it. Its members are, as he is, qualified for their jobs. They
do not grift, leak and lie constantly. The ousting this week of Eric
Lander, the chief science adviser, for using bullying language was
the first hint of White House impropriety in 12 months. Moreover,
the decency and professionalism of the president’s top team re
flect especially well on his character because many of them have
worked for him for years. They include Ron Klain, the chief of
staff, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser. Despite its
strengths, however, the administration is turning out to be error
prone in an unerringly consistent fashion.
Take its cardinal blunder, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghan
istan last summer. It pointed to three weaknesses that are charac
teristic of the 79yearold president. First, like many of his age and
long experience, he has a tendency to hew to outdated positions.
He justified his decision to withdraw the troops in terms of a re
luctance to send more Americans to their deaths, for example, de
spite none having been killed fighting in Afghanistan for over a
year. Second, and related, the president can seem rather detached
from reality. Leaked notes of a White House meeting the day be
fore the Taliban swept into Kabul suggest an administration em
barrassingly out of touch with the unfolding disaster. It resolved
to encourage its local Afghan staff “to begin to register their inter
est in relocation to the United States”.
Third, Mr Biden, who has bridled against smoothertalkingcriticsfordecades, tends to respond to any criticism with prickly
defiance. The day after the last American troops withdrew from
the wreckage of Kabul airport, leaving behind thousands of terri
fied Afghan collaborators and vast stocks of military hardware, he
deemed the evacuation to have been an “extraordinary success”.
Most of the administration’s failings follow a similar pattern.
Scarred by the inadequacy of the Obama stimulus package in
2009, Mr Biden pushed for a much larger fiscal boost last February
despite warnings that it could be inflationary. After inflation duly
took off, his administration maintained it was nothing to worry
about even though opinion polls suggested most voters thought it
was. In its doomed effort to persuade an unpersuadable 25% of the
population to get vaccinated against covid19, as Bill Galston of the
Brookings Institution, a thinktank, has noted, it meanwhile ne
glected the urgently required next wave of covid19 measures, in
cluding testing and therapeutics. Then it denied having done so.
Recalling his Senate career, Mr Biden appeared to believe that
the bipartisanship he promised on the campaign trail was achiev
able. When it proved not to be, his administration pushed a com
pendium of partisan spending plans which hardly any voter
understood. After that failed, it intemperately blasted the moder
ate Democrat who had killed it, Senator Joe Manchin, reducing its
chances of passing any future bill. Again and again, misjudgment
has given way to detachment, then unwarranted defiance.
The spat with Mr Manchin also highlighted another character
istic flaw. Though elected as a moderate, Mr Biden has taken great
pains to mollify the left. He would do better to pick a fight with it,
as Mr Clinton did, and as he himself did during the campaign. He
will not do so, it seems, out of an exaggerated fear of causing a
Democratic rupture. And this straightforward misreading of the
political mood has also spread through the administration. Hav
ing been tasked with handling Mr Biden’s outreach to progressives
during the failed legislative negotiation, Mr Klain, like his boss a
sometime moderate, stands accused of capitulating to them.
The president’s shortcomings are hardly news. Robert Gates’s
famous claim that Mr Biden had been wrong on “nearly every ma
jor foreignpolicy and nationalsecurity issue over the past four
decades” was so crushing because it rang true. Mr Biden was
against George H.W. Bush’s successful war with Iraq and for his
son’s calamitous repeat of it. He did not look like a credible presi
dential candidate until the alternative was Donald Trump. Demo
cratic insiders nonetheless convinced themselves that the quality
of his loyal retainers would help compensate for his weaknesses.
That they are instead being dragged down, as Mr Klain illustrates,
points to a more structural problem. Most presidents have an ad
viser or two of sufficient stature to give them unwelcome advice.
Leon Panetta tried, at least, to straighten out Mr Clinton; Rahm
Emanuel and Mr Biden himself did the same for Mr Obama. Mr Bi
den, surrounded by staffers and, in Kamala Harris, a struggling
vicepresident, appears to have no one able to play that role.To err is to be Biden
It is certainly possible to exaggerate the gravity of his flaws. No ad
ministration is perfect. And Mr Biden’s troubles are only partly his
fault. Most of the price rises were beyond his control. The main
problem with his legislative agenda is that hardly any Republican
will consider backing it. But the slenderness of his prospects of
success has made his failings appearall the more damaging. He
had so little margin for error. Andyetheis errorprone. It is hard to
see how success can come of that.nLexington
The administration’s errors have the president’s fingerprints all over them