Few presidential election bids could generate less enthusiasm than President Joe Biden’s announcement on Tuesday that he would seek re-election next year. In polls, an even smaller majority of Democrats believe he should not seek a second term. And the extreme polarization of the United States means that his approval rating as president remains low. Biden’s age is definitely against him. He will turn 82 within a fortnight of next year’s election. He stumbles over names. As if in a word game without rules, he once spelled Rishi Sunak’s name as ‘Rashi Sunak’. Biden stumbled on stage in the US and appeared to lose his footing at a public event in Bali.
But a big part of the problem is that something about Biden’s public-charm and repeated lapses as a public speaker has meant that he has been progressively under-represented through his career, despite being an over-achiever. Has been calculated. (Manmohan Singh has suffered similarly in the Indian context.) Consider Biden’s monumental achievements in pushing through legislation in a deeply divided Congress: the $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill—with few Republican votes—and climate. A great initiative to deal with change. He has reduced drug costs for senior citizens and raised corporate taxes. An astonishing 12 million jobs have been created since he took office, which may surpass the records of India and China for that period. Unemployment is near its lowest level in 50 years and wages for low-wage service jobs have soared.
The successful passage of a $1.9 trillion Covid relief package by the Biden administration early in his term is likely to raise inflation in the US, raising economic concerns in a country that suffers from hyperinflation. The US inflation picture was also worsened by global supply chain disruptions and rising oil and gas prices, but it remains a complicated matter for voters. Biden was able to appoint an African-American woman as a Supreme Court justice after she dared to choose Kamala Harris as his vice president. Above all, he has restored a complacency in public life that was sorely needed after Donald Trump as president and years of Republican misbehavior and legislative obstructionism under then-President Barack Obama.
Viewing Biden as an under-achiever is a metaphor for the US economy. For decades now, commentators have been conning themselves to say that America is in irreversible decline. According to a recent issue of The Economist, “America’s dominance of the rich world is staggering. Today it accounts for 58% of G7 GDP, compared with 40% in 1990 … a fifth, which is more than China and Germany combined. Despite higher incomes in its poorest state at purchasing power parity—based on the median income of France—which is believed to have far better social benefits—some four-fifths of Americans believe their children are comparable to theirs. Will be less prosperous.
Why such a crisis of confidence in a country long known for its optimism? Part of the explanation is one that also applies to polarization in India – the reinforcement of negative images and the ‘other’ on social media and timid television anchors. In a podcast this month, The New York Times’ Ezra Klein points to an epidemic of loneliness in American life: From 1990 to 2021, there was a 25 percent decrease in the number of Americans who reported having five or more close friends. .
It has been a fertile hunting ground for extreme ideas left and right of the political spectrum as social media and Fox News become alternatives to hanging out with friends, but the lies and general institutional insanity on the Republican right have fueled America’s anxiety Is. Economy and Society. Tucker Carlson, the recently fired Fox News anchor who was a key aide to Donald Trump during his presidency, was the originator of the TV-ratings theory that Caucasian men in the US suffer from testosterone deficiency. (His solution isn’t even printable.)
Conspiracy theories and such crude sociological analysis formed a basis for Fox News and Trump storming Capitol Hill on January 6th. And it is that incident — as well as the ongoing investigation into how Trump allegedly tried to manipulate vote counts in states like Georgia — that could potentially lead more Americans to Biden in a one-on-one contest with Trump in 2024. Will motivate to vote. Republicans will likely train their ammunition on Kamala Harris, and dog whistle on the Vice President’s African-American and Indian parents. Still, who better than one woman to argue that abortion rights are more under threat than ever?
For now, we should focus on the success that Joe Biden’s administration has had and worry about the ugliness of the election afterward. Biden’s hero is John F. Kennedy, but a better parallel is drawn with the perception of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency after JFK’s assassination in November 1963. Like Biden, Johnson had served as vice president in the shadow of a much younger, much more charismatic president. And yet in those painful first several weeks, Johnson made plans for civil rights legislation and the War on Poverty. Biden’s efforts to take climate change seriously and raise wages for the less affluent deserve praise. He is said to represent supremely and seems to have a good team around him. To borrow the words of biographer Robert Caro on LBJ, Biden has had to deal with a deeply divided Washington over the past few years to “see the possibilities of presidential power in a way that has appeared only a few times in American history.” “
Rahul Jacob is a columnist for Mint and former foreign correspondent for the Financial Times.
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