OPINION:
Measured by legislative accomplishments, President Biden is the most successful president since Ronald Reagan, but he faces skeptical voters in his bid for reelection.
The American Rescue Plan, Infrastructure Act, Chips and Science Act, and industrial policies for green energy, electric vehicles and general manufacturing renewal in the Inflation Reduction Act set the economy on a new path.
He has rejuvenated NATO and alliances in the Pacific and reoriented foreign trade and investment policies with allies and potential partners with the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. The latter takes tariff cuts off the table and seeks arrangements that secure supply chains and foster middle-class employment.
Progressive analysts herald his great economy — record job creation and low unemployment.
Yet in a recent ABC News-Washington Post poll, he trails former President Donald Trump, even with his predecessor facing criminal charges in New York that he falsified business records and perhaps an indictment in Georgia for tampering with election officials.
Mr. Biden’s programs are simply too expensive — the federal deficit has jumped from $984 billion in 2019, the last year before COVID emergency spending, to about $1.4 trillion this year — and terribly inflationary.
Most Americans won’t get those great union jobs making semiconductors in Arizona, but they all buy eggs and vote.
Americans have little confidence in the economic leadership of Mr. Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and simply shouldn’t expect a genuine soft landing — inflation moving down to 2% while avoiding a recession.
The president refuses to tackle the tough problems that are the root causes of the high cost of government and inflation.
Americans spend about 50% more than the Germans and the Dutch for comparable health care systems.
The president’s student loan forgiveness program does nothing about the high cost of college.
His industrial policies paper over with subsidies the nation’s cost disadvantages in manufacturing — for example, 44% in semiconductor production.
By refusing to negotiate genuine free trade agreements with allies including the European Union, United Kingdom, Japan and Taiwan, he alienates friends that pose no threat to our labor standards, driving up prices for imported goods.
His tax and spending plans don’t address the pending Social Security crisis.
Taxing the wealthy as progressives are inclined has limits. In New York City and California, the top combined federal, state and local income tax rates exceed 50%. Move those up any further, the population flight to Florida and Texas will look like a horde of humanity crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Higher taxes on stock buybacks, as Mr. Biden proposes, is folly. Companies that don’t have good uses for all their profits should return those to shareholders for reinvestment in emerging industries. Taxing the recirculation of capital serves only to curb innovation, productivity and growth, and feed inflation.
Americans are weary of culture wars — ask the makers of Bud Light. Mr. Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis know how to tap that vein.
But the great Republican albatross is abortion. Among credible Republican presidential hopefuls, only former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley offers even a vague proposal to counter Mr. DeSantis’ extreme stance. Florida bans most abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy.
The country faces shortages in critical skills areas like nursing that could be alleviated by immigration reform. Instead of stepping up, Mr. Biden imposes Third World wait times in hospital emergency rooms.
Mr. Trump offers few answers. According to William Barr, his own former attorney general, Mr. Trump “does not have the discipline. He does not have the ability for strategic thinking and linear thinking, or setting priorities or how to get things done in the system.”
Mr. Trump did accomplish higher growth in the few years before COVID-19 than did Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush by cutting taxes and deregulating, and he appointed a more balanced group of conservative federal judges. But he couldn’t pass infrastructure or immigration bills, and problems with health care and education were left to fester just as they are with Mr. Biden.
Mr. DeSantis has an impressive legislative record — tax cuts, near universal school choice, paycheck protection for unionized public employees and sizable funding for Everglades restoration.
But going to war with Disney, when the gravity of public opinion in conservative Florida would have permitted his ban on discussions in schools about gender identity to prevail, indicates a pugnacious disposition and misjudgment unworthy of national leadership.
His ban on abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy is a poison pill among the educated women he will need to win the White House.
Other Republicans in the field don’t stand out because they are not articulating how they would solve the nation’s fiscal problems and inflation, shore up Social Security, deal with immigration, or address high health care and college costs.
The GOP field is united against Mr. Biden, but what are they for? On what matters most, not much.
• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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