It's not the main focus of your newsletter, but I think judging Biden to have been a good President is not that far from the people who say "but after all, democracy is not at risk". Yes, in conventional terms, he's been just fine (e.g., pushing legislation, moving policy in a productive incremental way, rising to the occasion with Ukrai…
It's not the main focus of your newsletter, but I think judging Biden to have been a good President is not that far from the people who say "but after all, democracy is not at risk". Yes, in conventional terms, he's been just fine (e.g., pushing legislation, moving policy in a productive incremental way, rising to the occasion with Ukraine), which is both a reflection of his own political skills and the skilled technocrats (mostly) that he appointed. But it's not the right approach to the office in the historical circumstances of his election--he has been the equivalent of a pretty decent antebellum President who didn't really see the Civil War coming and figured that Missouri and Kansas would work itself out. And one of the major indicators of that has been his one really terrible appointment: Merrick Garland at Justice, who has thoroughly whiffed on every critical at-bat he's faced since Day 1. Biden's deepest instincts--and Garland's approach--told Biden that American politics would re-normalize if only he acted normally, and that was just profoundly, deeply incorrect, and a sign both of his own debility AND a sign that the leadership of his party simply doesn't understand the environment they're operating in. He's been fine in times that called for something other than fine. And that alone should have been a reason for the party to move aggressively towards someone else right after the good news came in after November 2022.
It's not the main focus of your newsletter, but I think judging Biden to have been a good President is not that far from the people who say "but after all, democracy is not at risk". Yes, in conventional terms, he's been just fine (e.g., pushing legislation, moving policy in a productive incremental way, rising to the occasion with Ukraine), which is both a reflection of his own political skills and the skilled technocrats (mostly) that he appointed. But it's not the right approach to the office in the historical circumstances of his election--he has been the equivalent of a pretty decent antebellum President who didn't really see the Civil War coming and figured that Missouri and Kansas would work itself out. And one of the major indicators of that has been his one really terrible appointment: Merrick Garland at Justice, who has thoroughly whiffed on every critical at-bat he's faced since Day 1. Biden's deepest instincts--and Garland's approach--told Biden that American politics would re-normalize if only he acted normally, and that was just profoundly, deeply incorrect, and a sign both of his own debility AND a sign that the leadership of his party simply doesn't understand the environment they're operating in. He's been fine in times that called for something other than fine. And that alone should have been a reason for the party to move aggressively towards someone else right after the good news came in after November 2022.