THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY BLOG

                      President Biden's Elusive Political Center:  Reconciling rhetoric and actions

As President Biden settles into his first days in office, the most pressing question for him and for the country is: how will he govern? In theory, he has many options given his political circumstances.  

He was elected with a solid vote of the Electoral College and with a substantial majority of American voters. Many of his supporters based their vote on the hope for a less contentious, combative presidency, which the low-key, Delaware-centric Biden campaign promised to deliver.

Aside from flashes of temper, Biden’s long-established political persona embedded in decades of institutional Senate experience seemed consistent with this hope.

Ironically, the Democratic Party’s success in achieving Senate parity with Republicans, after winning two seats in Georgia, exposed the Biden presidency to enormous and unexpected political pressure. This came primarily from within his own political party rather than the swing voters who had supported him. Many in his party wanted, and now expected, a presidency that reflected and acted on their core progressive beliefs. In their view, a divided distribution of partisan political power in Congress could no longer be used to explain or legitimize the need for policy moderation or a preferred premise of bipartisanship. 

Interestingly, the now unavailable "safe haven" of divided Senate/House political control opened up a further set of deeper questions about President Biden’s political persona. His persona was certainly more moderate than former President Trump’s. Yet President Obama had also combined a smooth, practiced, and subtle grasp of bipartisan rhetorical narratives with a clear and demonstrated commitment to progressive policies. 

His advisors, and Obama himself, tried to elude this fact with euphemisms. One advisor offered him as a “visionary minimalist,” while Obama preferred to call himself a “progressive pragmatist” (Davis 2009). The difficulty with these efforts was that Obama had clearly and publicly acknowledged his desire to be a great, transformative president. The transformative path he wanted to take the country down was clearly progressive.

Biden did not publicly express any personal or presidential “greatness” aspirations during the campaign or during his career for that matter. However, the "how he will govern" question is still the core question of his presidency. It has its roots in the presidential choices that Biden's political circumstances allow. Given that “unity” has been put forward as a major rationale and purpose of his presidency, Biden could choose to govern as a real moderate, attempting to bridge political divisions with policies and rhetoric that could begin to heal the deep wounds of the country’s increasingly partisan politics of the last five decades.

Calls to “eliminate the vitriol” and stop “the ad hominem attacks on one another,” along with calls for unity by the president, are welcomed. However, they are inadequate on two grounds. 

First, Mr. Biden has begun his presidency with a long list of executive actions that are decidedly progressive. They have not only revised a number of Trump initiatives. That was expected. They have also done so in a way that reframes the narrative foundation of a national set of basic policy domains and placed them squarely within progressive racial justice assumptions. When the president speaks of the need to “..battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country,” a premise shared by Biden’s Chief of Staff, he is building on the premise that “systemic racism” is the factual condition of the country. That is a debatable view not widely shared by many Americans.

Second, his many executive initiatives are taking place at a time when political revenge against almost anything or anyone connected with the Trump administration has metastasized across the country’s cultural and political spectrum. To note just one example among hundreds, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi has declared that “the enemy is within the House of Representatives.”

Similar rhetorical excesses nationwide have, in a number of cases, been met with silence from the White House. It is an odd reticence given the president’s public commitment to unity. As Jonathan Turley, a very substantively moderate scholar, has noted: 

“It will not end unless Biden calls out people in his own party and demands a lowering of such rhetoric. His words [calling for unity] continue to be drowned out by the words of his own party’s leadership.” 

Many of President Biden’s initiatives in his first days in office clearly reflect the ardently held narrative assumptions of the party’s strong progressive wing. They are distinctive, but not wildly divergent from those of the comparatively somewhat more moderate views of the party’s center, which has moved decidedly left over the years. 

Mr. Biden’s multiple progressive executive initiatives have become so pronounced and obvious that even the New York Times has suggested, “Ease Up on the Executive Actions, Joe." Progressive pundits are enthusiastic that Mr. Biden has been “surprisingly progressive” and perhaps is a "liberal crusader." However, candidate Biden campaigned on a platform of reconciliation. 

Mr. Biden's initial flurry of major progressive initiatives seems likely to inflame rather than soothe. The country is still, therefore, left to reconcile the president’s rhetoric and actions. The question now is not so much where the country’s political center lies, but where is President Biden’s.

References

Teddy Davis, “Obama Dubs Himself a ‘Pragmatic Progressive,’” ABC News, January 8, 2009