OPINION:
President Biden’s legacy is mixed. Only a handful of his predecessors could boast his range of legislative accomplishments, but he will leave the nation in perilous condition.
After finishing behind Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, he rallied, aided by his close ties to the Black community, to win in South Carolina.
Embraced by Democratic Party moderates as more likely to defeat then-President Donald Trump, he promised to be a bridge to a new, more progressive generation of Democrats. Instead, once nominated and elected, he was coopted by them.
Mr. Biden’s governing agenda was crafted in the image of the progressive wing’s identity politics, antagonism toward business, fiscal irresponsibility and ambivalence about defense.
He put gender and race first in selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate even though she failed in the primaries to frame a coherent argument for her presidential candidacy and fared poorly at the polls.
Subsequently she failed at the one job he gave her — to stem the flow of migrants to the border with Mexico by addressing the root causes in Latin America. Yet Mr. Biden endorses her for the Democratic nomination when he could remain neutral.
The CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act set the economy in a much-needed new direction.
Essentially, he embraced and added to Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports but has also countered China’s subsidies to manufacturing with generous aid to the strategically important semiconductor, electric vehicle and battery industries.
In formulating these programs, however, he bowed to the progressive social justice agenda by skewing benefits to favor minorities, women and labor unions instead of offering a level playing field to all. After the recent Supreme Court decision striking down racial preferences in college admissions, this diversity, equity and inclusion approach is constitutionally questionable and makes the programs much more expensive.
The same goes for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. In combination, all three laws and his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan were inadequately funded.
Along with Mr. Trump’s COVID relief spending, the resulting borrowing required the Federal Reserve to print nearly $5 trillion in new money.
Student debt forgiveness, aid to Ukraine and Taiwan and added subsidies for health care have boosted the federal deficit to its highest peacetime level other than during the pandemic and 2007-2009 recessions.
Going forward, federal borrowing pressure on capital markets will significantly raise interest rates and drag on private investment and growth.
He lacked the energy and vision to tackle some of the country’s most intractable problems: crime in our cities, the national housing shortage and the eroding quality and rising cost of education.
He bequeaths his successor a military that is likely not capable to defend American allies against the rapidly solidifying axis of Russia, China, North Korea and Iraq — if called upon in simultaneous conflicts in the Pacific and Eastern Europe or the Middle East.
The Pentagon likely needs a 2% of gross domestic product boost in spending to address these challenges, but Mr. Biden has not prioritized defense in his budgets.
On paper, Mr. Biden has established and strengthened an impressive lattice of alliances in Asia with Australia, Japan, South Korea and others and added Sweden and Finland to NATO, but has been timid to the point of encouraging aggression — for example, in confronting Iranian-sponsored terrorism in the Red Sea and underarming Ukraine and limiting the use of American weapons inside Russia in response to Moscow’s wanton aggression.
He has failed to articulate to the American people or Congress our national interests in Ukraine and in turn, aided the isolationist wing of the Republican Party that Mr. Trump happily cultivates.
Along with his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, our allies cannot be blamed for questioning whether the American military would show up or stay as long enough to save the Baltic States from Russia or Taiwan and the Philippines from China.
A recent Rand analysis concludes that Japan, Australia, Britain and Canada likely would not risk their armed forces to aid U.S. forces if China invaded or blockaded Taiwan. India and South Korea have indicated they are disinclined.
This is poor calculus, because the loss of Taiwan’s chip foundries would have devastating consequences for all our economies.
More likely, though, they would just be picking the winning side in hopes of cutting deals with the new landlord.
Mr. Biden bequeaths an America that is broke, weak and where it counts, standing alone.
Now it’s up to Ms. Harris to defy her critics by explaining to Americans how she proposes to improve the nation’s finances and defense establishment, address problems the states seem too paralyzed to confront on their own and define and secure our vital foreign interests.
Ms. Harris, we’re waiting.
• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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