To me, the signature aspect of Biden’s presidency has been his big break from decades of economic policy. For almost half a century, the federal government has refrained from any transformative long-term investments in the American economy. (Even the large pandemic relief payments were for consumption, not investment.)
In fact, the defining fiscal policies of our times have been tax cuts. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump all enacted large tax cuts that broadly benefited the rich. The result has been an America that can be characterized by private opulence and public decay — $100 million homes in a country where the roads are scarred by potholes and children die at higher rates than in any other country in the industrialized world. (These tax cuts, along with spending on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, are responsible for much of America’s enormous federal debt.)
Biden changed this narrative. He used the resources of the federal government to make large investments — in infrastructure, child care, manufacturing and energy. These investments won’t pay off anytime soon; many of them have just begun. But the United States is now undergoing the largest upgrade of its transportation infrastructure since the 1950s, with more than 56,000 projects already launched. It is seeing a boom in manufacturing investment and employment that reverses a decades-long trend. Green energy is booming, too. And for the year that it was in effect, Biden’s expanded child tax credit helped reduce child poverty in America by 46 percent — lifting a staggering 3.4 million children out of poverty in one year. (The credit expired after a year, and congressional Republicans refused to renew it.)
Biden’s measures helped trigger the strongest post-covid recovery of any major economy. The United States has produced more than 15 million jobs (the most ever for any president in one term), the unemployment rate stayed under 4 percent for over two years (the longest such run since the 1960s), and the Black labor force participation rate is now higher than that of Whites (for the first time ever on a sustained basis).
It’s true that inflation surged, and while the pandemic played a role, so did an excessive infusion of cash into the economy for which Biden must be held responsible. There are aspects of his policies that I disagree with. But overall, as former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers told Bloomberg TV, the record is “remarkable.”
“I don’t think any administration has so outperformed the economic forecasts on the day that it came into office,” he added.
Biden gets almost no credit for this economic revival. Some of that is the lingering effect of inflation and the persisting crisis of affordability in areas like health care, housing and higher education. But much of it, as I have long argued, is that we live in an age of cultural politics. The issue on which Republicans have been attacking Biden the most is not the economy but the border. On that, Biden was vulnerable because he had pandered too long to his left wing, allowing the system to collapse under the weight of millions of migrants arriving at the border and demanding the protections that come with seeking asylum. Biden finally adjusted, but by then Trump had forbidden any Republican cooperation to alleviate the crisis.
The other area where Biden has made his mark is foreign policy. He has addressed the challenges presented by the return of Russia and a rising China, but not through solo actions or one-shot deals. The administration has strengthened America’s alliance system, bolstering NATO and adding two new members to it: Sweden and Finland. Similarly, in the Indo-Pacific Biden has built new structures of cooperation and deterrence with Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and others. All in all, his administration has handled the world well enough that surveys suggest most countries rate Biden and the United States today much more favorably than they did Trump and the country under him.
Biden’s final legacy is that he has returned the presidency to an office of sanity, decency and dignity, ushering out the dangerous demagoguery and anti-democratic rhetoric and behavior that preceded him. But for that legacy to endure — and for Biden’s term not to simply be a moment in time — he needed to ensure that the United States actually closes the chapter on Trump. And to help make this more likely, he made the painful decision to withdraw from the presidential race, which will also earn him a special place in the history books.
Joe Biden feels that he has been underestimated all his life. Judging by his tenure in the White House, he’s right.
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