July 22, 2024
I’m not generally one to get teary-eyed over politicians. They mostly spend their careers trying to appease people with money and power. That’s how you get ahead in American politics. (There are exceptions, most obviously people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.) But they also are the ones who at the end of the day make policy and these policies make a huge difference in the lives of real people, for better or worse.
And once you get to the very top, it is hard to let go. President Biden really deserves our thanks for recognizing that he could best serve the party, the country, and the world by passing the torch.
Biden has much to show for his term in office to date. On the domestic side, he was the most impactful president in more than half a century. First and foremost, he pushed through his big recovery package just after taking office.
Job growth had slowed to a crawl in the last three months of the Trump administration. It would have taken five and half years to get back the lost jobs at the pace the economy was creating them from November of 2020 to January of 2021. Instead, we got the jobs back in a year and half under Biden.
The rapid job growth quickly got us back to full employment, with the unemployment rate reaching 4.0 percent by the end of the year. It fell further in 2022 and remained very low through 2023, although it has crept up modestly in recent months.
We saw the predicted benefits of full employment. The labor market improved most for the most disadvantaged groups in the labor market. Blacks, Black teens, and Hispanics all saw their unemployment rates fall to record lows.
The wage growth was most rapid at the lower end of the wage ladder, reversing the pattern of the last forty-five years. The gap in median wages between white workers and Black workers fell to the lowest level on record.
The strong labor market gave workers unprecedented ability to leave jobs they didn’t like. They could leave boring and dangerous jobs, or ones with few opportunities for advancement, and seek out better ones. As a result, workers reported the highest level of job satisfaction on record.
It’s also important to remind people that Biden really does deserve credit for the recovery package. He pushed it through Congress with only a couple votes to spare in the House and no room in the Senate.
After getting the recovery package through, Biden managed to pass three major bills with long-term impact. First, he passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill, which allocated funding not just for traditional infrastructure, but also replacing lead pipes for drinking water, extended high-speed Internet access, and established a national charging station network for electric vehicles.
He then passed the CHIPS Act which appropriated money for research and provided subsidies for building cutting edge semiconductors in the United States. The case for reshoring manufacturing can be overstated, but it is important to ensure secure supplies of essential economic inputs, and semiconductors certainly fit in that category.
Most importantly, Biden got the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed. This bill was primarily about kick-starting the green transition with subsidies for wind and solar energy, as well as electric vehicles.
While it is easy to say that the bill is inadequate given the size of the problem, the point is that it is a huge foot in the door. Going forward, it will not just be environmentalist-types pushing for money for the transition, it will be major businesses looking for profits. We can be fairly confident that, apart from a complete political catastrophe, we will see considerable pressure for further support for a green transition.
The IRA also included more funding for I.R.S. enforcement. This is a big deal since rich people were increasingly seeing taxes as optional. The I.R.S. now has cops on the beat to crack down on billionaire tax cheats.
Biden also pushed a pro-labor agenda, appointing people to the National Labor Relations Board who take seriously the responsibility to protect workers’ right to organize. He was also the first president ever to join a union picket line when he marched with UAW strikers last fall.
He also appointed people to the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department who take anti-trust policy seriously. Mergers and acquisitions that might have gone through unquestioned under prior administrations were scrutinized, and in some cases blocked.
We have seen a half-century of anti-labor policies and neglect of meaningful anti-trust enforcement. This cannot be reversed in a single four-year term, but Biden made a very good start.
I have written much on Biden’s record on domestic policy and will write more, but it was very impactful. He has much to show for three and half years in office with the barest congressional majority in the first two years and a split Congress in the second half of his term. He will be stepping down at the top of his game.
Getting back to Biden’s decision to step down, it is difficult to imagine how hard it is for these people to give up the power and status they have struggled for a lifetime to gain. To take a more pernicious example of a politician whose career in some ways paralleled Biden’s, Richard Nixon rose from a modest background to become vice-president, before narrowly losing the presidential race in 1960 to John F. Kennedy. He then lost a race for governor in California and seemed to declare the end of his political career, saying in an angry press conference “you won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.”
Remarkably, he came back to get the Republican nomination and then slip into the White House in 1968 in another close election. Being obsessed with power, he spied on his opponents and engaged in various types of illegal activity to contain opposition. (The current SCOTUS would probably say it was all legal.)
Anyhow, things began to unravel for Nixon when the Watergate break-in was uncovered and then people began to talk. The line got traced back to the White House and the key evidence was to be found on Nixon’s own tapes. When the Supreme Court ordered them released and the public saw them, it was clear that Nixon was in on the coverup from the beginning and everything he had said about the case was a lie.
In spite of this, Nixon was prepared to tough it out. The Republicans in Congress realized this was a disaster for the party. They sent a delegation of three senior senators to see Nixon, led by Barry Goldwater, the 1964 nominee and godfather of the modern conservative movement.
They told Nixon the score, trying politely to urge him to step down. Since Nixon’s impeachment in the House was already a foregone conclusion, he began to inquire about whether he could get the one-third of the Senate needed to keep him in office.
According to their account, Nixon turned to them and said something to the effect of “let’s see, I have you three” and then started to come up with other potential names. Goldwater shut this down by telling Nixon that he didn’t know that he could count on him. Nixon resigned the next day.
Anyhow, President Biden obviously cares far more about the country and the party, but the Nixon episode shows how hard can be for people to step aside once they have attained the pinnacle of power. We really do owe him a big debt of gratitude.
I will add one more point to put this in context. Can anyone imagine Donald Trump doing the same thing?
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