Why Biden is Not a Transformational President

In America, a lot has been made of little in the past few days. The conclusion of a 100-day period marked by intense spending, a successful vaccine rollout and geopolitical shift has made it oh-so easy for journalists and commentators to make some sweeping statement about how transformational Biden is. Both Republicans and Democrats have bought this rubbish – how many times have you heard or read that Biden has been a sort of turncoat radical? Elected as a fusty, old camomile centrist – destined to make both you and America sleep - Biden appears to rule with the determination, skill and ideological zeal of FDR on steroids.

At the root of this lies the idea that Biden will change America – its economy, its trading patterns, its society – in a long-overdue way. Biden has received news from on high that globalisation is not an unalloyed good. In fact, Biden has had an epiphany – globalisation can sometimes be bad! Biden, so goes the narrative, has therefore ordained America to stop being so damn globalised.

If only things were so simple.

As it turns out, Biden is step two of about fifty to potentially getting to some happy medium where the corrosion to communities and society that globalisation can cause is balanced with its considerable upsides. To say globalisation is not inevitable, has downsides and that we should probably act on this information is a step in the right direction – but it is only a step, not a solution.

There are considerable problems that face any government in dealing with a shift away from that old, now unfashionable, form of globalisation. The first is that we can’t just tell globalisation to go away – any solution to the problem has to recognise that our societies are hooked. We like our cheap, Chinese produced goods – even if we don’t like the impact this has on our jobs market, our real wages or Chinese power. Here, admittedly, Biden does has a few good ideas – Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, has said that American workers, not big pharmaceuticals and banks will be at the center of new trade agreements. However, it would be a lie to say that Biden has a map of what he wants society to look like in 30 years – there is no clear conceivable end goal that America is working towards. Instead, Biden is having to feel his way towards something incrementally better for America. At heart, then, remains a perennial problem – how to retain the benefits of globalisation while also eschewing its problematic elements.

This leads onto the second problem for the US government. Biden’s flagship policy of high human and physical infrastructure investment looks superficially to be unprecedented and transformative. The intention is for the planned extensive cash-dollop to be sufficiently well-targeted to both create jobs and help America stay competitive in a world of economic total war. In fact, the limitations of this stimulus-cum-supply-side investment will likely underlie the serious weaknesses leaders – especially US Presidents – have in changing the long term economic and historical path of their country.

Often, it is things tangential to the ordinary hurly-burly of politics that determine the economic destiny of a country. Germany’s relative edge in high-quality manufacturing can be attributed to a history and culture of high-quality technical education and an economically beneficial place in the European Union. The often-dull creation of a good business culture takes time and is never as satisfying a solution as a whole lot of big spending. It is also worth remembering, Biden’s hero – FDR – was far more reliant on events than anyone but historians are willing to admit. In fact, there is considerable evidence that the New Deal was starting to falter in the late 1930s, only for both the US manufacturing sector and economy to be saved by global demand for materiel in the Second World War. In a similar vein, well-targeted spending on Research and Development can be of immense benefit to a country – even if it takes up less than 1% of government spending and is rarely at the center of conversations about the economy. DARPA – a US governmental agency involved in high-risk, high-reward investments, with a can-do culture and a willingness to be liberal with its cash – is a good example. Dominic Cumming’s obsession with this is well founded – among other things, DARPA was responsible for the precursor to the internet, GPS and the stealth bomber.

There is often little direct correlation between what political parties says will create meaningful economic change and what does. What’s more, even where government is onto something, long term embedded structural change often relies on things that can’t be easily changed by governments – like cultures and strong global economic headwinds. In a way, this makes sense. If there was an obvious way a country can out-compete countries, every country would do it – and therefore no country would maintain that competitive advantage.

A final problem for Biden is that the US President is extraordinarily weak. The most powerful man on earth is in fact a highly constrained one. For FDR, a rapid expansion of the state occurred in part because Congress was – for the most part - with him, and the Supreme Court was (usually) not willing to act against him. Biden, unlike FDR, is a President affected by a Congress unlikely to rubber stamp his initiatives. Much of Biden’s legislation has to pass in a semi-legitimate fashion, through a process of ‘budget reconciliation’ – where legislation is tagged onto that year’s budget to avoid the Senate filibuster. What’s more, one man, Joe Manchin – the most moderate Democratic Senator, who has already torpedoed an important tax rise – has a de facto veto on any and all legislation as the Senate’s 50 Democrats can only pass legislation if all Senators vote in favour. This is likely to get worse for Biden – traditionally, it is hard for incumbent party to do well in the midterms, and it is entirely possible that the Republicans take the House or Senate in 2022. If they do, Biden’s legislative agenda will be inconsequential at best. Under these conditions, Biden’s goal of being the sort of President future Presidents would quote as an inspiration and ideal seems like a difficult one.

It was said of Trump by liberals that he was a test for America – Trump was put America’s institutions under pressure, probing them to see if they were strong enough to survive a sociopathic idiot who had little regard for Democracy. Biden, in fact is probably the greater test. He, maybe more than anyone, is the most likely person to get things done in America – he is well-connected in the Senate, has more political experience than maybe any other American alive and his soft, dull and amenable personality make partisan opposition against him hard. That he will likely make relatively little difference to the socio-economic and political climate of the US is depressing, yet at the same time, a good lesson in clarifying what the role of President is - namely by showing us what it is clearly not.