It’s too early to summarise President Biden’s accomplishments — he has six months left in office, and a lot can happen in these volatile times — but with what we know will be a one-term presidency, it seems worth looking back and asking what will go down in history.
To me, the defining feature of Biden’s presidency is a major shift from decades of economic policy, in which the federal government has refrained from making transformative long-term investments in the American economy for almost half a century. (Even the massive pandemic relief payments were for consumption, not investment.)
In fact, the defining fiscal policy of our era is the tax cut. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump all enacted massive tax cuts that broadly benefited the wealthy. The result was an America characterized by private luxury and public decay, with pothole-ridden roads and $100 million homes built in a country where child mortality is higher than anywhere in the developed world. (These tax cuts, along with spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, are responsible for much of America’s massive federal debt.)
Biden has changed that. He has used federal resources to make massive investments in infrastructure, child care, manufacturing, and energy. These investments won’t pay off immediately; many of them are just getting started. But the U.S. is currently undergoing the largest transportation infrastructure upgrade since the 1950s, with more than 56,000 projects already underway. Manufacturing investment and jobs are surging, reversing a decades-long trend. Green energy is also booming. And Biden’s expanded child tax credit helped reduce U.S. child poverty by 46% the year it was enacted, lifting as many as 3.4 million children out of poverty in one year. (The credit expires a year later, and Republicans in Congress have refused to renew it.)
Biden’s actions have helped spark the strongest post-COVID recovery of any major economy: the U.S. has added more than 15 million jobs (the most of any presidential term), the unemployment rate has remained below 4% for more than two years (the longest since the 1960s), and the labor force participation rate for Black people now exceeds that of white people (the first sustained increase in history).
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It’s true that inflation has soared, partly because of the pandemic but also because of the excessive pumping of money into the economy, and Biden must take responsibility for that. There are aspects of his policies I don’t agree with, but overall, as former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers told Bloomberg TV, his record is “remarkable.”
“I don’t think there has ever been an administration that has outperformed economic forecasts so much on its first day in office,” he added.
Biden gets little credit for this economic recovery. Part of it is the effects of lingering inflation and a continuing affordability crisis in areas like health care, housing, and higher education. But a lot of it, as I have long argued, is that we live in an era of cultural politics. The issue Republicans have attacked Biden on most is not the economy but the border. On that front, Biden was vulnerable because he pandered to the left for too long and allowed 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 eventually adapted, but by that time Trump had forbidden any Republican cooperation in mitigating the crisis.
Another area where Biden has made a mark is foreign policy. He has addressed the challenges posed by a resurgent Russia and the rise of China, but not through unilateral actions or one-off deals. The administration has strengthened the US alliance system, strengthened NATO and added two new members, Sweden and Finland. Similarly, in the Indo-Pacific, he has built new structures of cooperation and deterrence with Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and others. Overall, the Biden administration has navigated the global situation well, and surveys show that most countries view Biden and the US much more favorably than Trump and the US currently do.
Biden’s final achievement was to return the presidency to a sane, civil, and dignified office, free of the dangerous inflammatory and anti-democratic rhetoric and actions of his predecessor. But for that achievement to be lasting, and for Biden’s term to be more than a passing phase, he needed to ensure that America actually got to the end of Trump. And to improve that chance, he made the difficult decision to withdraw from the presidential race, a decision that will earn him a special place in the history books.
Joe Biden feels like he’s been underestimated his whole life, and judging by his time in the White House, he’s right.
