Earlier this week President Biden wandered up the street from the White House to the Brookings Institution. At Brookings Biden regurgitated the talking points he has cited in support of his economic record. The White House has posted the text of his speech under the groaning title Remarks by President Biden on His Middle-Out, Bottom-Up Economic Playbook.” I have posted the Reuters video at the bottom.
Biden was introduced by Brookings co-chairman Glenn Hutchins and, more briefly, by Brookings president Cecilia Rouse. From 2021 to 2023, Rouse served as Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. According to her, “inequality and climate change” are what it’s all about. The “climate” for “inequality” should be “changing.”
Rosue, by the way, is one of the Biden administration economists who toed the “transitory” line on inflation. In May 2021, Rouse attributed inflation to a mismatch between supply and demand due to the pandemic and the economic snap-back that had pushed inflation higher. She assured us the mismatch should prove temporary. “I fully expect that will work itself out in the coming months,” she said.
Hutchins sounds like he could be speaking ironically, praising Biden in terms that highlight his — what to call them? — shortcomings. “Our work is grounded on the proposition that sound policy starts with facts, thoroughly analyzed, rigorously tested, and thoughtfully applied to the world’s most complex challenges,” Hutchins intones.
Hutchins then held out Biden as a person “who exemplifies the Brookings mission” and who has “consistently shown his commitment to evidence based policy making.”
If only Hutchins had congratulated Biden on his good judgment and integrity, we could be sure that he was kidding.
Speaking of which, Biden turns to his personal wealth in his remarks: “You know the worst part of all this that I can acknowledge at Brookings? For 36 years, I was listed as the poorest man in Congress. (Laughter.) What a foolish man.”
How funny can you get? Biden should have added that he has made up for lost time.
James Antle tackles Biden’s speech in the Washington Examiner column “Biden gives economic farewell speech as voters say good riddance.” Reviewing the text, Antle comments:
This sets up an odd tension in Biden’s Brookings speech where he mentions the good things he is bequeathing to “my successor” and the economic follies of “my predecessor” who happens to be the same person. He mentions Trump by name only twice, once to say he should have copied the once and future president by putting his own name on the stimulus checks and then again in a quote from Time magazine about the good economy Trump will inherit. Biden concluded by daring Trump to undo his economic policies, saying he had set the “benchmarks, if you will, that we should measure the success or failure of our next four years.”
Yet, a plurality of voters looked at these same results and concluded it was time to bring back Trump.
From the bottom-up and middle-out to over and out for Biden in four years.
It’s the political equivalent of what Eugene O’Neill called a “strange interlude.”
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