Biden Should Govern With a Second Term in Mind



Biden Should Govern With a Second Term in Mind

by Jonathan Bernstein, bloomberg.com

November 10, 2020 06:30 AM

Eight more years?

Photo by: Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty

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I wrote an advice column for Donald Trump after he won the 2016 election suggesting that he find an experienced White House chief of staff and support his or her efforts to organize the new administration. Trump, of course, never managed to do either.

President-elect Joe Biden doesn’t need my advice about how to set up the White House, so I’ll skip right to one recommendation that Trump never needed: Whatever his actual intentions, Biden should spend the next two years as though he is absolutely, without a doubt, running for a second term.

Why? Lame ducks simply don’t have the same influence as first-term presidents headed for a re-election campaign. If a president is going to be on the ballot, every member of the House and a third of the Senate will be on the ballot with him, and members of his own party know that any damage he sustains will harm them as well. With a lame duck, by contrast, bureaucrats, interest-group leaders, governors and foreign officials all know that they can wait out the president and try their chances with the next one, while efforts to unify the party are complicated by competition over an open nomination. 

If Biden isn’t going to run in 2024, when he’ll turn 82, he’ll need to let the party know at some point so that a nomination contest can take place. But November 2022, after the midterms, will leave plenty of time.

Now, this is all complicated a bit by one of Biden’s other goals, which is to return the nation to normal politics. Therefore, he shouldn’t emulate Trump and formally begin his campaign as soon as he takes office. As earlier presidents realized, overt campaigning years before the election is a bad idea because it surrenders some of the symbolic advantage of the chief-of-state role. Smart presidents realize that representing the entire nation isn’t just the job, but also a source of influence within the system. So Biden should be relatively subtle in pretending to run for a second term. Still, that’s exactly the kind of healthy pretense that professional politicians should be capable of pulling off. 

Oh, and while I’m at it? Ron Klain for chief of staff. Just saying. 

1. Dave Hopkins on the election results. For what it’s worth: He and I disagree on characterizing Biden’s victory as narrow (his reading) versus solid (mine).

2. Dan Drezner on the world’s reaction to Biden — and Trump.

3. Matt Grossmann talks polling with G. Elliott Morris.

4. Isaac Chotiner talks polling with Nate Cohn.

5. Sherrilyn Ifill on the evidence that the election didn’t go as smoothly a some have suggested. Good corrective. 

6. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Eli Lake on how Trump is leaving the presidency.

7. And Konstantin Toropin, Holmes Lybrand and Annie Grayer have the facts about claims that dead people voted in Michigan. I’m not going to link to all of the debunkings, but just to be clear I’ll say it again: If there were serious accusations of fraud or error, the Trump campaign would be parading the evidence in front of the cameras and in front of judges. Neither is happening, which is why I think it’s safe to say that there are no serious charges.

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To contact the author of this story:

Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.net

Published on November 10, 2020, 7:30 AM EST

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