Biden can't spin his way out of the inflation mess
Throughout Biden's first year in office he has responded to inflation with a callous and out-of-touch mix of dismissal and derision
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As President Joe Biden marks the end of his first year in office, his allies in the media are now admitting he has a big economic problem: Americans are struggling to live on tighter budgets than they were when he took office. Seven percent inflation is simply too punishing to downplay or spin. But even as they sound the alarm, it’s clear the president simply isn’t getting the message.
Outlets friendly to the president’s agenda are increasingly warning that the economic source of inflation is becoming a political nightmare for the president and his party. And they’re not mincing words. As one recent CNN headline put it: "'It’s getting worse every time': Inflation concerns could spell trouble for Democrats."
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The trouble begins with the president, who throughout his first year in office has responded to inflation with a callous and out-of-touch mix of dismissal and derision.
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It started with the dismissive "inflation is transitory" story. It morphed into the derisive "no serious economist" expects unchecked inflation is on the way. Finally, it became the desperate "inflation is a high class problem" story. The problem for the president is that each new attempt to dismiss inflation or deride those who expressed concern got destroyed by reality.
When the headlines say inflation has hit a near 40-year-high, people believe it. And they want their president to believe it.
Spin doesn’t change the prices people see on the store shelf. Spin doesn’t change the price at the pump. Spin can’t lower the price of a used car. And spin won’t bring down your heating bill.
When the headlines say inflation has hit a near 40-year-high, people believe it. And they want their president to believe it.
Billboard on the cruelties of inflation in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. ( / Getty Images)
Contrary to the president’s hopes, the inflation we're seeing right now isn't a temporary blip or a concocted narrative, it's an entrenched reality. It doesn't yield to words or spin but demands action.
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And action has been the president’s biggest failure. As prices soared and worker shortages caused supply chains to go haywire, the president tried to sell a nonsensical plan of even more government spending and disruptive private sector vaccine mandates. His policies weren’t just off the mark, they were backward.
Economic signals, and most people’s day-to-day reality, were telling us the exact opposite of what the president preached. We need government spending sanity and clearer pathways to getting more people back to work.
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The political problem for the president is that his economic mismanagement has been and continues to be abundantly clear to a majority of Americans.
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It’s bad news for a president when his policy failures have been the economy’s biggest sources of hope, but that’s exactly where we stand. The multi-trillion dollar "Build Back Better" plan would have been gasoline on the inflation fire.
Mercifully, a majority of Senators have had the good sense to block it. And the OSHA vaccine mandates were guaranteed to cause confusion and consternation for businesses already struggling to fill millions of open positions. Thankfully, the Supreme Court ruled against it.
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America may have been spared the economic damage of those policies, but the president won’t escape the political costs of his bad judgment and ineffective leadership.
President Biden’s first year in office demanded reality-based answers to historic economic challenges. What the country got instead was a president who, in word and deed, evidenced that he didn’t understand or care. Belatedly, his allies in the media now appear to be attempting a wake-up call. The president is showing no signs he’ll hear it.
Brian Brenberg is a professor of business and economics at The King’s College in Manhattan. Follow him on Twitter: @BrianBrenberg.