A lot of what you are saying can be seen in what appears to be Biden's good relationship with Mitch McConnell. This was probably crucial to prevent a stonewall even though McConnell was on the short side of the 50/50 split.
Biden is indeed an under appreciated treasure in these times of increasing polarization and empty grandstanding. He is probably the wisest president this country had in a very very long time.
The debate about 2024 is almost entirely about whether Biden would win or lose. But what should also figure into Democrats' thinking about whether or not he should run is what kind of President he has been and would likely continue to be. I think -- as MY ably lays out -- is that he has been a damn fine President. What other Democrat would be as good a President during the next term? None, I'd say. I'm still worried about his age and possible rapid decline, but based on past performance, I'd rather have him as President in 2025 than any other alternative.
I read "There’s a hokey element to it, and being fearlessly cringe is part of Biden’s appeal." to my 20 something daughter and she replied, "No. You have to be self-aware to be fearlessly cringe."
I would like to believe this take on Biden's motivation and philosophy but his public ineptness stands in the way and any reporting on his private competence doesn't show up in my reading. Perhaps it is too wonky, too subtle, and perhaps intentionally so in order to maintain his effectiveness?
I know that it originally comes from Bismarck but "The art of the possible" has been butchered into nonsense by it's use in corporate sales and consulting and should now be abandoned to the gutters of forgotten phrases of hackneyed pseudo-speak.
I agree. For instance I don't believe Joe Biden has particularly strong opinions on the nuances of the transgender debates. He, 100% rightly, empathizes with a group of people who are incredibly vulnerable and experience violence at a higher rate than most Americans. Whether or not there are multiple sexes, multiple genders, etc. is probably not a topic he cares about: he just wants transgender Americans to be safer and happier.
The moral of this thought process to me is that Biden is not a wonk: he cares about the details because they can get to consensus, not because the details themselves are vital to Joe Biden. It's the opposite of Obama who cared about the particulars because he saw each piece as important. Obama/HRC wanted to make the perfect policy: Biden asks if the policies on the table improve the country, and then shrugs off the particulars. Both approaches have their benefits.
"Whether or not there are multiple sexes, multiple genders, etc. is probably not a topic he cares about"
Biden's been impressively woke on this kind of stuff for a while- or at least way beyond what you'd expect from an old guy with his kind of background- even back during the primary he all but told a troll to fuck off when they tried to "gotcha" him about it:
Hell, going back to TWENTY goddamn TWELVE- when gay marriage wasn't even a won fight yet- Biden was already ahead of the game and saying that transgender rights were "the civil rights issue of our time":
Biden is definitely an empathetic people person and a bit of a doer. It's his personality. Obama is a thinker. Trump is charasmatic. I think any personality type can be an effective leader but, especially in today's social media driven landscape, they need to have that "it factor" that makes people want to follow them. They have to be an "influencer" and be able to cast a vision. I don't think Biden has this in him, and it's probably his biggest downfall. "Not Trump" was a good strategy to get elected but it isn't much of a vision. And doing Trumpy things like stashing classified documents, even if on a much lower scale, makes him look like a hypocrite.
Matt, this read like it was based on or heavily shaped by interviews with high level WH staff who know Biden's thinking, perhaps even Biden himself. If so, it feels wrong not to cite it. Agreeing with their perspective wouldn't negate need to do so.
If not, it was strangely written. Lots of declarative "Biden thinks" instead of framing points as your interpretation of his actions.
If you did the interviews under deep background, some policy on doing this should be posted publicly.
So this is kind of putting a finger on what I actually think is among Biden's worst attributes. The whole "let's cut deals by throwing each side a bone on their dumbest boondoggles" vision of bipartisanship is just awful. I like ideological politicians and I like legislation that passes on it's own merits instead of one bad idea being horse traded for another bad idea. I shit on Obama plenty, but arguably his best characteristic in office was the effort put into identifying the smart, boring places that both sides could agree to do something more efficiently, instead of playing to the dumbest parts of each base.
I really don't understand your theory of the case here. Government is so dysfunctional that they can't pass anything, so we should...raise the bar and make it even harder? And that no one should compromise even though they are often idealogical opposites on many issues? That's not the slow boring of hard boards, that's breaking the drill bit on solid rock.
My case is that the reason government is dysfunctional, at least in large part, is because our elected officials are preoccupied with fighting over commitments that are not properly within the scope of their remit and are essentially impossible to coherently compromise on. Because this is the source of the dysfunction, lowering the bar to legislation would merely serve the further entrenchment of these improper commitments, when the proper prerequisite to better democratic functioning is to restore constraints on the scope of the federal regulatory/administrative state.
So you think it all worked fine without any compromises or horse trading (probably literally in some cases!) at some point in the past?
I don't see compromise as a dirty word. It's really just forcing one to rank their ideological commitment to various ideas. I don't think it means someone is expected to have no inviolate principles, they just can't all be.
But if everything has to pass "on its merits" without horse trading then you have perpetual hyperpartisanship and gridlock. Addressing climate change is only seen as something with merit by one party, so the only way to achieve it is for that party to control all three branches and ram it through. It also means that each election is critical because if the opposing party can muster a majority then they immediately undo the previous work. You can substitute tax cuts or some other Republican desire for climate change, the theory is the same. That kind of stop start, wild swing is really inefficient. With horse trading you gain protection for programs, not perfectly efficient, but better than everything being existential every bill and every election.
I mean none of this is particularly wrong, it's just the reason why the filibuster is good. A single party shouldn't be able to ram through their priorities without opposition support when they only have bare majorities. It's bad when the GOP can pass unilateral deficit financed tax cuts with 51 votes in the Senate because they can stick them in reconciliation.
Why not? The rest of the world seems to work fine like this? Can you point me to how Sweden, France, Bulgaria, or Japan have suffered from chaos because they don't have a filibuster?
Yes, both parties will overreach at first, then they'll get spanked by the voters, and then actually be able to police their most partisan members.
Smaller/more homogeneous countries can afford forms of democracy further to the totalitarian end of the totalitarian-pluralist spectrum than larger/more diverse countries.
I mean, the biggest gap in American poltiics is currently between white liberals and white conservatives. Even putting that aside, the modern filibuster was only basically created in like, 2000.
Medicare passed w/ less than 60 votes, and the idea of a filibuster was never even brought up by LBJ's point man in the Senate in his personal notes. That was when we were still a pretty damn large country and more diverse than all of Europe at the time.
Also, if we're calling winning a majority of seats in a democracy "totalitarian," well, OK then.
But if you combine this many veto points with a vision that politics should never concede wacky points in order to get compromise, then you can never get anything of real substance passed. Earmarks, for all their problems, enable you to get a coalition together that can pass the substance along with a bunch of fluff, but substance alone can't get a filibuster-proof majority except after a 2006-2008 style double-wave election.
Right. The system is surely broken at the moment. My general diagnosis is that the fundamental source of partisan gridlock is that in the mid-20th century the scope of the federal state expanded too greatly to be effectively democratically administered. We're now left with a more totalitarian executive trying to operate within a constitutional order intended to secure a pluralist democracy. I really don't think it's a sustainable state of affairs, either we're gonna fix it somehow (SCOTUS? Non-delegation?) or something really important is gonna blow up in our faces like defaulting on the debt or SS going insolvent. I know people around here assume we're somehow going to pass legislation to fund SS before it blows up. I'm less confident our democratic institutions are capable of doing so.
Bravo! Thank you for not mincing words to support a decent President doing a quietly decent job.
His leadership has been inspiringly uninspiring lol. There’s unfortunately a real problem with this politically however - goobers like Biden need to perform to be well-liked - the earnest ones have a tough time campaigning on a shitty record.
Meanwhile we just have a shit ton of headwinds. Not least of which is a Republican House caucus intent on making government look incapable and dysfunctional. Not least of which is a cabal of authoritarians pricks in Asia that would rather see the US flounder, so they do everything they can to make Biden look bad, to empower the party that also wants to make US government look bad.
You want to just articulate an analytically correct view of the situation and say “that thing [you] said there, that’s not true!”
But the [friend’s/spouse’s/partner’s/colleague’s/etc] job isn’t to state the unvarnished truth, it’s to understand the truth and behave constructively.
One advantage the friend/spouse/partner/colleague has is that they can send you a private text message that contains the truth, even as they behave constructively in third-party negotiations on your behalf. Politicians can't actually send you a private message, even though modern media often makes it feel like they are speaking privately to us. (The way people feel like reality stars and YouTubers are their friends.)
It amazes me how many people in politics and other fields have a hard time distinguishing between what they want and how to get it (i.e., strategy). Just saying here's a thing, it makes sense, let's do it is the most straightforward, but it's often not the most effective. I'm glad the Biden administration seems to be good at figuring out how to get stuff done, although I hope not too many of the plans backfire, like the inflation-fanning stimulus.
To be fair, I could probably benefit from more strategic thinking in my own work and marriage!
I think part of the problem is that politics involves a group of people working together, but talking in public. When an individual is engaged in negotiations, that individual understands that they should have a clear private view of their objectives, but should only make public whatever statements will help the negotiation. But when a group is engaged in negotiations, members of the group often don't understand that supposedly in-group communication still set the tone for negotiations with the out-group. Demanding reassurance that your coalition members actually have your interests at heart is a natural thing to want, but unless you have truly private communications, it causes problems for negotiation.
>> a $3 billion investment in domestic pickle manufacturing <<
Matt who told you about my idea?! The MyPillow guy is old news, the 2024 news cycle will belong to MyPickle.
A lot of what you are saying can be seen in what appears to be Biden's good relationship with Mitch McConnell. This was probably crucial to prevent a stonewall even though McConnell was on the short side of the 50/50 split.
Speaking of an optimistic view of national life, you gotta admire Governor DeSantis's push to make it easier to use state power to execute prisoners:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/24/ron-desantis-florida-death-penalty-unanimous-jury
Biden is indeed an under appreciated treasure in these times of increasing polarization and empty grandstanding. He is probably the wisest president this country had in a very very long time.
The debate about 2024 is almost entirely about whether Biden would win or lose. But what should also figure into Democrats' thinking about whether or not he should run is what kind of President he has been and would likely continue to be. I think -- as MY ably lays out -- is that he has been a damn fine President. What other Democrat would be as good a President during the next term? None, I'd say. I'm still worried about his age and possible rapid decline, but based on past performance, I'd rather have him as President in 2025 than any other alternative.
That said, almost all second terms suck.
I read "There’s a hokey element to it, and being fearlessly cringe is part of Biden’s appeal." to my 20 something daughter and she replied, "No. You have to be self-aware to be fearlessly cringe."
I would like to believe this take on Biden's motivation and philosophy but his public ineptness stands in the way and any reporting on his private competence doesn't show up in my reading. Perhaps it is too wonky, too subtle, and perhaps intentionally so in order to maintain his effectiveness?
Reading suggestions would be appreciated.
I know that it originally comes from Bismarck but "The art of the possible" has been butchered into nonsense by it's use in corporate sales and consulting and should now be abandoned to the gutters of forgotten phrases of hackneyed pseudo-speak.
How much of this was based on reporting vs punditry? Liked the article but the style made it hard to guess how much if it was informed by reporting.
I agree. For instance I don't believe Joe Biden has particularly strong opinions on the nuances of the transgender debates. He, 100% rightly, empathizes with a group of people who are incredibly vulnerable and experience violence at a higher rate than most Americans. Whether or not there are multiple sexes, multiple genders, etc. is probably not a topic he cares about: he just wants transgender Americans to be safer and happier.
The moral of this thought process to me is that Biden is not a wonk: he cares about the details because they can get to consensus, not because the details themselves are vital to Joe Biden. It's the opposite of Obama who cared about the particulars because he saw each piece as important. Obama/HRC wanted to make the perfect policy: Biden asks if the policies on the table improve the country, and then shrugs off the particulars. Both approaches have their benefits.
"Whether or not there are multiple sexes, multiple genders, etc. is probably not a topic he cares about"
Biden's been impressively woke on this kind of stuff for a while- or at least way beyond what you'd expect from an old guy with his kind of background- even back during the primary he all but told a troll to fuck off when they tried to "gotcha" him about it:
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-iowa-state-fair-gender-1453688
Hell, going back to TWENTY goddamn TWELVE- when gay marriage wasn't even a won fight yet- Biden was already ahead of the game and saying that transgender rights were "the civil rights issue of our time":
https://www.politico.com/blogs/politico44/2012/10/biden-says-transgender-discrimination-civil-rights-issue-of-our-time-147761
To combine this a take on this with your post about how good the West Wing was:
Let Biden be Biden.
Biden is definitely an empathetic people person and a bit of a doer. It's his personality. Obama is a thinker. Trump is charasmatic. I think any personality type can be an effective leader but, especially in today's social media driven landscape, they need to have that "it factor" that makes people want to follow them. They have to be an "influencer" and be able to cast a vision. I don't think Biden has this in him, and it's probably his biggest downfall. "Not Trump" was a good strategy to get elected but it isn't much of a vision. And doing Trumpy things like stashing classified documents, even if on a much lower scale, makes him look like a hypocrite.
This was a weird article that didn’t feel like it was in the authors own voice to me
Matt, this read like it was based on or heavily shaped by interviews with high level WH staff who know Biden's thinking, perhaps even Biden himself. If so, it feels wrong not to cite it. Agreeing with their perspective wouldn't negate need to do so.
If not, it was strangely written. Lots of declarative "Biden thinks" instead of framing points as your interpretation of his actions.
If you did the interviews under deep background, some policy on doing this should be posted publicly.
So this is kind of putting a finger on what I actually think is among Biden's worst attributes. The whole "let's cut deals by throwing each side a bone on their dumbest boondoggles" vision of bipartisanship is just awful. I like ideological politicians and I like legislation that passes on it's own merits instead of one bad idea being horse traded for another bad idea. I shit on Obama plenty, but arguably his best characteristic in office was the effort put into identifying the smart, boring places that both sides could agree to do something more efficiently, instead of playing to the dumbest parts of each base.
I really don't understand your theory of the case here. Government is so dysfunctional that they can't pass anything, so we should...raise the bar and make it even harder? And that no one should compromise even though they are often idealogical opposites on many issues? That's not the slow boring of hard boards, that's breaking the drill bit on solid rock.
My case is that the reason government is dysfunctional, at least in large part, is because our elected officials are preoccupied with fighting over commitments that are not properly within the scope of their remit and are essentially impossible to coherently compromise on. Because this is the source of the dysfunction, lowering the bar to legislation would merely serve the further entrenchment of these improper commitments, when the proper prerequisite to better democratic functioning is to restore constraints on the scope of the federal regulatory/administrative state.
So you think it all worked fine without any compromises or horse trading (probably literally in some cases!) at some point in the past?
I don't see compromise as a dirty word. It's really just forcing one to rank their ideological commitment to various ideas. I don't think it means someone is expected to have no inviolate principles, they just can't all be.
But if everything has to pass "on its merits" without horse trading then you have perpetual hyperpartisanship and gridlock. Addressing climate change is only seen as something with merit by one party, so the only way to achieve it is for that party to control all three branches and ram it through. It also means that each election is critical because if the opposing party can muster a majority then they immediately undo the previous work. You can substitute tax cuts or some other Republican desire for climate change, the theory is the same. That kind of stop start, wild swing is really inefficient. With horse trading you gain protection for programs, not perfectly efficient, but better than everything being existential every bill and every election.
I mean none of this is particularly wrong, it's just the reason why the filibuster is good. A single party shouldn't be able to ram through their priorities without opposition support when they only have bare majorities. It's bad when the GOP can pass unilateral deficit financed tax cuts with 51 votes in the Senate because they can stick them in reconciliation.
Why not? The rest of the world seems to work fine like this? Can you point me to how Sweden, France, Bulgaria, or Japan have suffered from chaos because they don't have a filibuster?
Yes, both parties will overreach at first, then they'll get spanked by the voters, and then actually be able to police their most partisan members.
Smaller/more homogeneous countries can afford forms of democracy further to the totalitarian end of the totalitarian-pluralist spectrum than larger/more diverse countries.
I mean, the biggest gap in American poltiics is currently between white liberals and white conservatives. Even putting that aside, the modern filibuster was only basically created in like, 2000.
Medicare passed w/ less than 60 votes, and the idea of a filibuster was never even brought up by LBJ's point man in the Senate in his personal notes. That was when we were still a pretty damn large country and more diverse than all of Europe at the time.
Also, if we're calling winning a majority of seats in a democracy "totalitarian," well, OK then.
But if you combine this many veto points with a vision that politics should never concede wacky points in order to get compromise, then you can never get anything of real substance passed. Earmarks, for all their problems, enable you to get a coalition together that can pass the substance along with a bunch of fluff, but substance alone can't get a filibuster-proof majority except after a 2006-2008 style double-wave election.
Right. The system is surely broken at the moment. My general diagnosis is that the fundamental source of partisan gridlock is that in the mid-20th century the scope of the federal state expanded too greatly to be effectively democratically administered. We're now left with a more totalitarian executive trying to operate within a constitutional order intended to secure a pluralist democracy. I really don't think it's a sustainable state of affairs, either we're gonna fix it somehow (SCOTUS? Non-delegation?) or something really important is gonna blow up in our faces like defaulting on the debt or SS going insolvent. I know people around here assume we're somehow going to pass legislation to fund SS before it blows up. I'm less confident our democratic institutions are capable of doing so.
Bravo! Thank you for not mincing words to support a decent President doing a quietly decent job.
His leadership has been inspiringly uninspiring lol. There’s unfortunately a real problem with this politically however - goobers like Biden need to perform to be well-liked - the earnest ones have a tough time campaigning on a shitty record.
Meanwhile we just have a shit ton of headwinds. Not least of which is a Republican House caucus intent on making government look incapable and dysfunctional. Not least of which is a cabal of authoritarians pricks in Asia that would rather see the US flounder, so they do everything they can to make Biden look bad, to empower the party that also wants to make US government look bad.
You want to just articulate an analytically correct view of the situation and say “that thing [you] said there, that’s not true!”
But the [friend’s/spouse’s/partner’s/colleague’s/etc] job isn’t to state the unvarnished truth, it’s to understand the truth and behave constructively.
One advantage the friend/spouse/partner/colleague has is that they can send you a private text message that contains the truth, even as they behave constructively in third-party negotiations on your behalf. Politicians can't actually send you a private message, even though modern media often makes it feel like they are speaking privately to us. (The way people feel like reality stars and YouTubers are their friends.)
It amazes me how many people in politics and other fields have a hard time distinguishing between what they want and how to get it (i.e., strategy). Just saying here's a thing, it makes sense, let's do it is the most straightforward, but it's often not the most effective. I'm glad the Biden administration seems to be good at figuring out how to get stuff done, although I hope not too many of the plans backfire, like the inflation-fanning stimulus.
To be fair, I could probably benefit from more strategic thinking in my own work and marriage!
I think part of the problem is that politics involves a group of people working together, but talking in public. When an individual is engaged in negotiations, that individual understands that they should have a clear private view of their objectives, but should only make public whatever statements will help the negotiation. But when a group is engaged in negotiations, members of the group often don't understand that supposedly in-group communication still set the tone for negotiations with the out-group. Demanding reassurance that your coalition members actually have your interests at heart is a natural thing to want, but unless you have truly private communications, it causes problems for negotiation.