How Democrats misunderstand Biden’s bully pulpit

How Democrats misunderstand Biden’s bully pulpit

By Paul Waldman

Columnist

Today at 4:06 p.m. EST

When your party controls the White House yet faces political peril, there’s a natural impulse to cry “Why won’t the president fix this?!?” Which is what many Democrats are doing right now, especially by demanding that President Biden “focus” on inflation.

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As The Post reports, “worried Democrats” are urging the White House “to do more to acknowledge inflation as a central concern for voters and tout what they are doing to combat it.” Biden needs to communicate “a consistent message that he understands our economic pain,” writes one moderate Democrat.

As understandable as Democrats’ worries might be — especially given the likelihood that they’ll lose control of Congress next year — this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the president’s bully pulpit.

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The president can do many things with his unique position in the informational universe. But simply “focusing” on something like inflation — which people experience in their everyday lives — is not going to change many minds.

The first reason is that most people don’t really know what the president is and isn’t focusing on. People will tell pollsters and focus groups that they wish the president would focus more on things they care about, but voters have only the vaguest idea of what the president is doing most of the time. And much of what he does isn’t covered heavily in the media, so it passes without notice.

For instance, on Monday Biden held a White House roundtable with numerous CEOs to discuss supply chain issues, the retail picture for the holidays and other economic issues. Biden spent a good deal of time lauding progress on things such as easing bottlenecks at ports.

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That meeting was all about “focusing” on inflation. But it didn’t make front-page news or lead the evening newscasts, because it didn’t have much of the conflict or uncertainty that drives news coverage.

If you asked Biden’s advisers, they’d tell you he’s “focusing” on inflation every day, in public events and policy decisions such as releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Those steps might have only a limited impact, but they certainly reflect a focus. Meanwhile, Democratic members of Congress say constantly that the recently passed infrastructure bill or the Build Back Better bill will help bring down inflation. You can’t honestly accuse them of a lack of inflation focus.

Biden faces another communication problem: Inflation is about a practical reality, but also about perceptions of that reality. And as I’ve argued, media coverage has overhyped inflation — it’s a real problem with real impact, but we’re treating it as though it’s not at 6 percent but at 60 percent. So while Republicans shout that inflation is destroying everything we cherish, when Biden “focuses” on it by showing that he understands people’s struggles, he only reinforces the idea that it’s a desperate situation.

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Finally, many Democrats harbor misconceptions about how effective his predecessors use of the bully pulpit was. Liberals often urge Biden to do what Donald Trump did and take credit for every positive economic development, whether he had anything to do with it or not. They seem to think Trump’s ubiquitous media presence and absurd braggadocio were persuasive.

But that’s not true. Trump was the most unpopular president in the history of polling. He repeatedly tried and failed to convince the public of things; remember the migrant “caravans” that Trump thought would lead to a Republican victory in the 2018 midterms? And with all his power to win our attention, he lost his bid for reelection.

And while Trump got his best approval numbers on the economy, even there he dramatically underperformed. Even when the unemployment rate sank to 3.5 percent just before the pandemic struck — and with Trump saying daily that he had delivered the greatest economy in the history of the universe — his approval on the economy hovered around 50 percent. In the best circumstances possible, he couldn’t convince more than half the public he was doing a good job on his best issue.

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So if your advice to Biden is that he can improve his approval on the economy by “focusing” on inflation, come up with a better idea. You know what will actually convince Americans that Biden has done a good job on inflation? When inflation goes down.

Biden can do things to help that process along, but much of it is out of his control. In the meantime, it’s all well and good to show the public he understands and cares about what’s happening in their lives, but that won’t change much.

The good news for him is that when inflation does ease — and especially if the pandemic has receded — those same inattentive voters will say they’re happy with what he’s done on the economy. No matter what he’s “focusing” on at the time.