At a time when President Joe Biden’s competence is being questioned, let's talk about blocking and tackling — that is, how the administration is doing on the basics of the presidency. Note that this is very different from the question of whether he’s making good policy decisions, however one would define them. A good case can be made that Biden was slow to move to vaccine mandates and made serious mistakes in the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, and that the former of those has been costly. Other policy decisions have drawn ideological and partisan attacks, but that’s simply a consequence of being president during the current era.
But putting policy decisions aside, let’s look at one day in the Biden White House: Wednesday, the day after the off-year elections.
Item: The White House website had evidence of serious work on two issues, ransomware attacks and supply-chain problems. I have no idea whether these reactions will produce good results (although there’s at least a case being made that the administration is doing well on the former). But the first step toward results is effort, and it does appear that the administration is at least doing the work. Biden could do a better job of demonstrating action on supply-chain problems than he has, but that, too, seems to be improving.
Item: Biden rolled out another set of judicial nominations, bringing the number of nominees so far to 62. Getting these out the door was one of Donald Trump’s strengths as president, and Biden is moving more quickly. Both Trump and Biden were much better at this than President Barack Obama. That’s on pure numbers. It’s difficult to say much about quality given partisan polarization, but it’s safe to say that so far, Biden’s picks haven’t stirred much controversy, while Trump already had some nomination fights. (Obama’s battles came later, but in part because he got off to a slow start in choosing judges.)
Item: Biden announced three more executive-branch nominations. Again, Biden has moved relatively rapidly on these, and with little controversy, with the notable exception of Neera Tanden’s failed nomination to head the Office of Management and Budget, which ran aground over intemperate things she’d said about lawmakers.
Item: Biden hastily added a public event to his schedule, giving a statement on the approval of Covid-19 vaccines for children from ages 5 through 11. This accomplished a couple of things. One was demonstrating Biden’s focus on the pandemic. Particularly after a foreign trip devoted to climate change, publicly performing attention to vaccination fits with how the White House wants voters to see the president and his administration. Approval ratings depend more on results than on good White House communications, but it’s still the right way to do things. Biden also took questions from the press after his statement, which gave him a chance to respond to the Democrats’ bad election day on Tuesday. I didn’t think his comments were particularly impressive, but that’s not the point; WH 101 suggests the president go out there and take his lumps in this situation, because otherwise his failure to take questions about it becomes a continuing story and therefore keeps the elections in the news.
Little if any of this is related to the things voters judge presidents on. None of these items made much news. Nor were they designed to. Some amounted to superficial communications stuff. But it demonstrates the kinds of things that the administration appears, at this point, to do well, and it’s in most cases in strong contrast to the constant chaos of the Trump White House — or, for that matter the significant chaos during the first year of Bill Clinton’s presidency. It’s not guaranteed that getting the nuts and bolts right will lead to policy success, but I’d rather have it than not.
Bloomberg
