The Simple Yet Difficult Thing Joe Biden Must Do to Help Save American Democracy
Governing well is Biden’s best defense against a Trumpist resurgence.
As a Mitt Romney–supporting Republican in 2012, I distinctly remember the moment when I knew that Barack Obama would be extraordinarily tough to beat. It was when I first heard his one-line sales pitch: “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”
If you remember the upheavals of 1998—when Bill Clinton was caught perjuring himself after an affair with an intern—and think back to how he was able to survive the scandal, a single phrase comes to mind: peace and prosperity. The American economy was roaring, the Soviet Union was extinct, and the federal budget was in a state of actual surplus.
Let’s go back even farther, to 1988. Americans tend to get weary of one-party presidential control. Since the Roosevelt-Truman era, American voters have given the same party three consecutive presidential terms only once, when George H. W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis.
Why did Bush win? Certainly Dukakis had his deficiencies as a candidate, but Bush had a mighty wind at his back—years of economic expansion supplemented by the Reagan-era revival of the American spirit and American self-confidence.
Amidst the recent wave of (extremely justified) concern over the future of American democracy—rooted in the threat of a potential Donald Trump comeback and the moral and intellectual decline of the American right—I fear that we’re losing sight of the main thing that can stop Trumpism in its tracks. It’s not ideology. It’s not messaging. It’s competence. The short history above reminds us why.
If a president is perceived to be doing his job, then he can weather an immense amount of controversy. He can persevere through intense opposition. But if he fails, then in a two-party system, American voters have only one place else to turn. The right is unhealthy. The right is increasingly in the grips of an unhinged and radicalized base. Yet all the abstract arguments about the right's threats to democracy will likely pale in electoral significance compared to the concrete reality of a failed presidency.
Or to put it more simply, if Joe Biden and the Democratic majority want to save American democracy, then Biden and the Democratic majority need to be competent. That’s the single most important thing they can do to stop Trump, to defeat the radical right, and to restore a sense of normalcy and decency to American politics. They don’t need to get everything right, but they need to get the big things right, and so far they’re not. So far the administration is stumbling, and every stumble gives Trump hope.
It is no coincidence that Biden’s approval rating first went underwater during the middle of the Afghanistan-withdrawal debacle. He learned a bitter lesson. Americans may want to end wars, but they do not like to lose wars, and the more that ending looks like losing (especially losing catastrophically and chaotically), then the more the president will be perceived to have failed.
But Afghanistan is hardly the only profound challenge Biden faces. If he was elected to restore a degree of normalcy to American life, the present moment still doesn’t feel anything close to normal yet.
Yes, the economic recovery from the COVID recession is under way, but does the economy feel healthy to you? Inflation is unacceptably high. Supply-chain problems are causing unexpected inconveniences and disruption in ordinary American lives.
Moreover, the pandemic persists. We know that vaccine resistance is prolonging America’s agony, but the agony is still very real, and it compounds the sense that our pre-pandemic lifestyles are slipping away.
Biden also inherited a crime crisis, and it persists as well. The rate of increase in murders slowed in the first three quarters of 2021, but the number of murders still went up. This surge in deadly crime has had catastrophic effects on America’s most vulnerable citizens and most vulnerable communities.
And as I write this newsletter, Russia is massing forces on the borders of Ukraine, raising the possibility of the first large-scale land war in Europe in generations. The buildup, especially in the aftermath of America’s Afghanistan humiliation, contributes to the sense that the world’s primary economic and military superpower, the United States, no longer possesses the will or the ability to maintain global stability.
When presidents have inherited crises, their best arguments for reelection have been simple—they did their job. Obama inherited an economic meltdown and a raging War on Terror. By 2012 the economy was growing, Iraq seemed to be at relative peace, and he had achieved a victory (killing bin Laden) that had eluded Bush.
Ronald Reagan inherited a nation in a state of malaise. The Soviet Union appeared ascendant. The economy suffered from “stagflation,” and a punishing recession in the first half of his first term magnified the sense of national despair. The Republicans were walloped in the 1982 midterm election. By 1984, however, it was “Morning in America,” and no Democratic nominee stood a chance.
The Carter-to-Reagan transition is interesting and instructive. After the Nixon presidency, the voters narrowly chose a Democrat with integrity, a man who pledged to turn the page from the chaos and corruption of the Nixon years, but in many ways (and despite concrete accomplishments, including the Camp David Accords), the presidency was ultimately too big for Jimmy Carter. He wasn’t the man for the moment.
At first, Reagan seemed to stumble as well, and by the end of his second year in office his approval rating was an abysmal 35 percent. But the economy changed. America’s strategic position improved. No one would argue that Reagan’s record was one of unvarnished success. But when he faced the voters again—and when his vice president faced the voters in 1988—the country was manifestly and obviously better off than it had been in 1980.
America is far more polarized than it was in 1984. It’s hard to even imagine a president sweeping to a victory of that scale. But that doesn’t mean that competence no longer matters. Indeed, for Joe Biden it matters more than it did for Donald Trump. Biden has a distinct political disadvantage compared to Trump—he has no cult. He doesn’t possess the kind of fanatical support that defines the Trump base.
The 2020 election demonstrates that Biden likely has a higher electoral ceiling than Trump, but he also has a lower floor. He is not unconditionally loved. And so, more than Trump, he has to prove to America that he can do his job. Fair or unfair, that’s the raw political reality we face.
In the effort to preserve American democracy, we all have our roles to play. Conservative classical liberals can and should confront and contest Trumpism at every turn. It’s a grave patriotic responsibility to make sure that America has a healthy alternative to Democratic Party rule.
But Democrats cannot coast on Republican dysfunction. It’s simply not politically viable. Joe Biden has limited ability to influence the culture of the American right. He has much more ability to influence the course of American policy, and if he can wrestle inflation under control, curb the rise in crime, push through the pandemic, and maintain a degree of global calm, he’ll do more than anyone else to block Trump’s political resurrection and preserve American democracy from Trump’s malignant influence.
None of this is easy. Joe Biden has arguably the hardest job in the world—made more difficult by a fractious and dysfunctional political culture—but simple competence has rarely been more vital. When he or his successor faces the voters in 2024, he has to have a better message than “I’m not Trump,” and there’s no better message than a job well done.