OVER THEIR HEADS

The 46^th President of the United States has a problem, in fact several problems. He got his job, arguably the hardest job in the world, while he is 78 years old, an age at which most Americans are comfortably retired, trying to make the most out of their ‘golden years’ or what is left of those. The only reason why he took the job, in fact pursued it, is out of a sense of urgency, an urgency created by decades of benign neglect of the plight of the ordinary American citizens and the dereliction of duty by his predecessor, compounded by the worst pandemic inflicted on the nation in over a hundred years. The problem is that he is under extreme time pressure and that democracy denies him the tools to simply impose his will and agenda on a divided nation. The time pressure stems less from his advanced age than from the fact that he is at serious risk of losing his majority in Congress in the midterm elections of November next year.

President Biden has concluded that he needs to avoid losing control of Congress if he wants to have a full four years to make good on his campaign promises and he has chosen to make this happen by using the full force of the government to come to the aid of hard-pressed lower income Americans who have been disproportionally hit by decades of governmental neglect and by the devastating effects of the corona pandemic. He made his pitch Wednesday night, at the eve of his first 100 days in office, at a joint session of Congress, but really over the heads of the 200 legislators permitted in the chambers. He bets heavily on the premise that, ultimately, his Republican opposition cannot keep swimming against the tide of public opinion that heavily favors the main components of his agenda. In this he has a distinct advantage in the fact that the Republican party, under Trump, has decided to go without a platform and agenda, other than to oppose anything the Democrats want to get done.

At the heart of his pitch on Wednesday night was this appeal to his audience: “Look, we can’t be so busy competing with one another that we forget the competition that we have with the rest of the world to win the 21^st century.” Biden is keenly aware that the world, friend and foe alike, is watching to see if America can demonstrate that democracy is still the governing principle that can deliver for the people. And, in the prototypically Democratic style of FDR and Lyndon Johnson before him, he is unapologetically moving to use government as an instrument of social and economic transformation. His Republican critics are right in arguing that Covid relief and infrastructure improvements do not have to cost as much as the roughly $6 trillion that the Biden package amounts to. Calling a spade a spade, the Biden package is an ill disguised initiative to disperse the inequality cloud hanging over American society, by using the full force of the government to transform what our market economy and polarized partisan politics have not been able to correct. The economy seems to be recovering nicely with the stimulus put in place by Congress in five increments, starting under the Trump presidency, and does not require the proposed level of further spending, but restoring social equilibrium and peace does, at least in the judgment of President Biden.

He bets on the premise that if he cannot get sixty votes, sixty percent of the Senate, to agree with him on policy, he can still prevail by getting sixty percent or more of the voting public on his side. As it stands, the Monmouth University Poll indicates that with respect to his main initiatives, particularly his proposals for infrastructure investment, expanded healthcare and childcare, paid leave, and college tuition support, he garners more than 60% support from his constituents. The same poll suggests that a large majority also supports paying for these plans by raising taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals making more than $400,000/year.

The question is if this support will last and carry over into the only polls that really matter, the midterm elections of 2022. That, in turn, is likely to depend on how much of the plan can be implemented and provide tangible relief to the people who need it, before the people are called to the polls again.

Herein lies the Gordian knot that President Biden will have to unwind. I think he is right in arguing that America cannot win the competition with China, and democracy cannot win the competition with autocracy, if we continue to compete with ourselves. I also think that America cannot regain its status as the beacon of guidance to the world if it cannot demonstrate that it can overcome its own inequities, specifically its racial issues, its xenophobia, and, most of all, its rising inequality. As President Biden likes to say: “Our greatest strength is not the example of our power, but the power of our example.” He is right when he warns us that the autocrats of this day and age, and no one more that China’s president Xi, think that democracy cannot compete in the 21^st century with autocracies, because it takes too long, or proves impossible, to get consensus. We can only prove them wrong if we stop quarreling among ourselves and either vote to give one of our parties a popular mandate to govern or agree on a compromise agenda that can pass in an evenly divided congress, regardless who carries the majority.

Claiming, as President Biden does, that ‘America is back’ does not convince anyone unless we can demonstrate that we have regained control of a democratic (lower case) agenda. Otherwise, we will wonder, as world leaders do today, ‘yes, America is back, but for how long?’ Will the next election blow us off course again?

What the Biden proposals bring to the surface is that a chasm has developed between the political preferences of the members of Congress and the population at large. Not only, but mostly, on the Republican side of the aisle. This chasm is the result of primary driven moves towards the extreme wings of our two parties. The polls covering the Biden proposals bear out that the population at large is much less ideologically driven, much more practical, than its representatives in Congress would suggest. That is what Joe Biden is banking on and that is why, in his speech outlining and promoting his plan, he went over the heads of the parliamentarians, directly to the people, the people deciding who get to represent them in the legislative and executive branches of government. Will we listen? We will see the answer to that question the day after the November 2022 election.

WILL THE REAL AMERICA PLEASE STAND UP

I am old enough and have lived long enough in the USA to remember the TV show ‘To tell the truth’ and, almost 100 hundred days into the Biden administration, I keep asking myself the question that concluded every episode of the show: ‘Will the real America please stand up’?

The electoral process has put Joe Biden in the White House as the 46^th President, but the 45^th still claims that he won the election and many Americans, a large majority of Republicans, side with him. We knew that the nation was polarized, but to such extent? The President may be the titular head of the nation, but it cannot be said that the occupant of the White House is representative of the nation and what it stands for. Otherwise, how to explain the contrast in character between #45 and #46?

What will we see when the real America stands up? Will it look like a Trumpian America, an Obama-like America, a traditional establishment America, or still something else? The world, Americans included, is thoroughly confused about the true American identity.  And when the real America stands up, when will it be, and will we like what we see?

What we hope to see is a determined, tenacious America willing to assert its world leadership in every respect, economically, militarily, scientifically, democratically, and morally. Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane, in a 2013 National Affairs article, reminded us that “Great powers are rarely brought down by outside adversaries; they destroy themselves from within. Very often, they do it by falling victim to economic imbalances and the decay of once-vibrant governing institutions that prove unable to adapt to changing circumstances.”

America, today, is at risk of internal strife, paralysis, and decay that its adversaries and competitors, China most of all, will only be too glad to take advantage of. America finds itself in this situation because it has been lacking, for decades now, a clear national strategy and competent administrations to execute. America has put itself deep in debt, without gaining anything, without addressing and solving any of the major challenges that put its hegemony in jeopardy. Its Congress has debased itself to becoming a platform for grandstanding, and a showcase for partisanship. It has proven to be incapable of legislating in a bi-partisan manner as demonstrated by the fact that all major legislative measures of the past three administrations, the Affordable Care Act, the Trump Tax Cuts, and Biden’s American Rescue Plan, have passed with only single party support. Congress has yet to demonstrate that it can pass meaningful, substantive, legislation unless the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives are all controlled by the same party. 

The onus is now on the Biden administration. It has until November of next year, only 17 months, to show that an effective, problem solving, administration can make a difference in the lives of ordinary Americans and fend off the traditional curse of a losing mid-term election after its first two years in office.

In the 21^st century, only George W. Bush has pulled this off, arguably only because of the afterglow of his handling of 9/11 and only in his first term.

All the political chatter today is about the Republican push to tighten voting access laws and gerrymandering voting districts as a means to enhance their electoral chances in November of 2022. The Democrats plan on countering these moves by trying to bring the HR-1 Voting Law, that has passed the House of Representatives in 2020, up for a vote in the Senate, while it still has control of the Senate and the White House. Both parties understand how crucial the outcome of the 2022 mid-term election is in determining their political fortunes and it is revealing for their current stance that they are pushing in opposite directions, for and against the widest possible access to the voting booth. The resulting stand-off cannot be resolved without congressional action, and that fact places the filibuster question front and center of the equation.

The Republicans are all too aware that the proposed changes in the voting rights laws, particularly as they relate to voting access, gerrymandering, mail-in voting, automatic voter registration, and campaign financing, will make it harder for them to compete for the White House and majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives. After all, according to the latest Gallup poll, Republicans represent only 25% of the population, versus 32% for Democrats and 41% for Independents.

This is not lost on President Biden, who has come up with a novel definition of bi-partisanship when he claims that his overly broad and expensive proposal for infrastructure is bi-partisan, because it seemingly has the support of a large majority of the population, including Republicans. This stance hints at a strategy to pursue between now and November of next year. The strategy seeks to drive a wedge between the Republican Congressional delegation and the Republican voters, claiming in effect that the Republican Congressional stance is not representatives of the preferences of Republican constituency at large. It might work if Biden’s infrastructure proposal, which he has dubbed the ‘American Jobs Plan’, can be carried through Congress under the reconciliation rule that does not require a 3/5^th majority vote in the Senate. It would still require negotiation and arm twisting to keep all Democrats, including Joe Manchin, in line. But that is a good thing, because there is little doubt that the proposal on the table is too rich and too broad to be effectively passed and implemented. If Biden manages to steer a sanitized American Jobs Plan through congress, and if it will be perceived to improve American lives, Republicans will have a hard time explaining to their constituencies why they voted against it. 

Passing a comprehensive voting rights bill is another matter. Here, Biden may have no choice but to negotiate with Joe Manchin cum suis for an exception from the filibuster rule, because this type of legislation certainly cannot pass under the reconciliation rule and there is no chance for him to pick up 10 Republican votes for the legislation on the table.

The best effort Biden can make for a win in November of 2022 is to convince the voters that the government has a role to play in improving their personal circumstances. He has done that by signing the American Rescue Plan that deals with the negative impact of the Covid19 pandemic, and he proposes to do (much) more of the same by his infrastructure proposal, dubbed the American Jobs Plan.

A Democrat loss in November of 2022 is not inevitable, if Biden manages to get the American public on his side by taking for most Americans the sting out of the Covid recession, by reducing the inequities in pay, taxation, housing, education, healthcare, and the criminal justice system, by revamping infrastructure in an environmentally conscious way, and by addressing family needs with respect to childcare and eldercare. That is a formidable task to be accomplished in very short order after decades of inaction. It will still require for the Democrats to put up strong candidates in the congressional races, candidates who wholeheartedly support the Biden agenda and appeal to the public at large. And it will require legislative discipline of not trying to do too much at once and avoiding ‘third rail’ issues like killing the filibuster rule and court packing. They may get help from the Republican party if, in their primaries, they give the upper hand to Trump fanatics. Ultimately, turn-out in response to recognition of what is at stake will be the deciding factor, much like it was in 2020. Which is why the battle about voting rights rages.

A wild card in this strategizing of domestic policy and tactics is what happens beyond our borders. Any plan can be derailed by foreign threats like China moving on Taiwan, Russia moving on Ukraine, a Middle East conflict, or a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. All bets are off when the USA gets embroiled in yet another foreign conflict. God help us if that happens.

The truth is that America is in desperate need of domestic problem resolution. It has lost tremendous respect in the world by seriously flawed and inconsistent leadership and by failure to acknowledge and correct its societal shortcomings. One may, or may not agree, with all aspects of the Biden agenda, but denying the Biden administration a governable majority in Congress will only be a recipe for further stalemate and inaction. I hold out hope that, by the process of deliberate, targeted, government action and public response, we will see the real America stand up and reveal itself by the end of 2022. May it be an America that we can all believe in, be proud of, and stand behind.