Why Biden’s transformational presidency is failing His administration lacks the vision to solve big problems By Peter Morici
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/feb/22/why-bidens-transformational-presidency-is-failing/
President Biden’s transformational presidency is unraveling. He simply lacks energy and ideas and is surrounded by top officials with resumes that nominally check the boxes on experience but lack the vision to solve big problems.
The whole justification for his candidacy was he was not Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose socialism many voters feared, or former President Donald Trump, whose character many disliked but whose policies voters never rejected.
In 2020, Mr. Biden managed to win, but Democrats lost seats in the House. In 2021, the off-year election went badly for liberals in Virginia and elsewhere. In 2022, the president’s approval ratings are lower than a snake’s belly, and generic polls favor the Republican Party to take back the House.
Mr. Biden chose Vice President Kamala Harris for her race and gender and charged her with addressing the southern border crisis. As with most issues, she is more concerned with politics than the substance and is accomplishing little.
Often, she doesn’t do her homework and then blames the staff for poor results. Frustrated by her resulting lack of clout in the administration, key staffers have left.
Mr. Biden was warned his stimulus package was much too large, and now the country bears 7.5% inflation, declining real wages and many benefits of asset bubbles going to Wall Street bankers.
Amazon reports pandemic enabled profits, then raises Primes subscription rates 17% and executive base pay more than 200%.
Over the last eight years, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell have hardly been right about inflation. Now, they embrace the kind of gradualism former Fed Chair Arthur Burns pursued to avoid a recession and reelect Richard Nixon. And former Fed Chair William Miller bungled to ultimately drive inflation to double digits and help defeat former President Jimmy Carter.
The Afghanistan debacle was the handiwork of Mr. Biden’s political motive to get the troops out by the 20th-anniversary attack on the World Trade Center, Secretary Antony Blinken’s foolish notion that he could negotiate with terrorists, and Secretary Lloyd Austin’s failure to level with Americans about the likelihood the Afghan military could hold off the Taliban — even for a few months.
Regarding Ukraine, Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken are giving Russian President Vladimir Putin exactly what he wants by pronouncing the U.S. military won’t be directly involved and failing to offer the Ukrainian and Russian bordering allies with offensive weapons.
If Mr. Putin can threaten to take out Kyiv or the Baltic states, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and our allies should have the missiles to quickly impose terrible damage on Moscow.
Sanctions with teeth — even those costly to us like shutting Russia out of the dollar payments system — should be in place now because if Mr. Putin is not trying to destabilize Ukraine into chaos or planning to invade, why has he withdrawn his diplomats from the country?
If Mr. Biden manages a diplomatic deal for Russia to stand down without pledging not to expand NATO or station additional troops along the alliance’s eastern front, NATO will still abstain because the Europeans know Mr. Putin can easily push his military machine back on the Ukrainian border or the frontiers of the Baltic states.
Moreover, the United States and NATO will be implicitly acknowledging the legitimacy of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Diplomats are very good at disguising appeasement.
Mr. Biden tells us competing with China is job one. Still, the dollars earned from its bilateral trade advantage helps Beijing build its industry and finance its aggressive military buildup and Belt and Road initiative.
The notion that America can compete with China on industry and trade and cooperate on climate change and pandemics absolutely fails to recognize we are dealing with a wholly untrustworthy regime that prosecutes atrocities on a massive scale in Xinjiang.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo loves publicity. She fills my email inbox with news of her participation at critical meetings, but along with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, doesn’t have credible, comprehensive industrial and trade policies to disengage from China.
At the Defense Department, Mr. Austin still has not produced a comprehensive strategy to reconfigure and modernize the Navy to meet Beijing’s growing threat to Taiwan and security across the Western Pacific.
Mr. Austin and Mr. Biden offer no plans to counter the threats to the American homeland and fleet by Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles, anti-satellite weapons and cyberattacks.
If Mr. Blinken, Mr. Austin, Ms. Raimondo, Ms. Tai, Mr. Powell and Ms. Yellen possess a kernel of strategic thinking among them — beyond the Treasury’s aspiration to create an international tax cartel under the guise of a corporate minimum tax — I am at a loss to find it.
In just 13 months, Mr. Biden and his politically correct administration have managed to make the average American poorer, the richest bankers richer, and appease and embolden our enemies.
• Peter Morici is an economist, emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland and national columnist.
Comments are closed.
