Biden: Year One

President Biden held his own in his first news conference of 2022, taking questions for over an hour and a half and steadfastly defending his record on the economy and on the pandemic.  But while he talked a lot about his accomplishments, he didn't actually say much. And what he did say may have necessitated another hour for questions.

He said he was happy to have the 2022 midterms be a referendum on the economy despite the fact that a lot of folks aren't feeling the good news about the positive economic indicators.  He also said that, if voting rights legislation isn't passed - it won't be, it pretty much died yesterday - some Republican victories in November could be "illegitimate," making him sound like the guy he'd defeated for the Presidency in 2020.  And despite his insistence that he plans to get out of Washington as the midterm election campaigns ramp up, he spent a lot of time talking about Washington - the process, the dealmaking, the politics . . ..  He also wanted to know what the Republicans stood for after they've made it clear what they're against, but the Republican base is so much against Biden and the Democrats that they don't have to vote for anything.  They can just vote against the Democrats.  All we know for certain is that they're for Trump, and that's good enough for them.

Many people, on this first anniversary of Biden's Presidency, can't understand why a man of so much Washington experience is having trouble governing this country.  Maybe because of this: Biden's experience has mostly been in the legislative, not the executive branch.  He knows how to persuade people and make backroom deals to get legislation passed, and he knows how to find consensus and forge alliances, but he doesn't know how to lead the effort.  He's more of a part of the effort.  Maybe that would explain why only three sitting U.S. Senators - Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama - have been elected President. More recently, Americans had preferred governors for the Presidency - people who lead, execute, and get things done.  But after George W. Bush, who had served six years as governor of Texas, Americans largely soured on electing governors to the White House.  Ask Martin O'Malley, who offered his executive experience as a former governor of  Maryland as an argument for his presidential bid . . . and went from offering new leadership in 2016 to offering no leadership in 2020.  Biden never led anything before becoming President.  Even as part of the executive branch, when he was Obama's Vice President, he was primarily the liaison between the White House and Congress and mostly served as second in command but making few if any decisions on his own.

So what I do really think of Biden as President?  I think he's dong okay.  Not great, just okay. And if you wonder why I would accept such mediocrity, consider what we had just before him.