President Joe Biden is running for re-election. A lot of Democratic voters have been telling pollsters they wish he wouldn’t.
To the extent that voters are wary of having a president in his 80s, their discomfort is understandable. But if it’s a question of how Biden has done handling the job of president, Democrats should cheer up about their likely nominee.
Biden’s challenge throughout his presidency has been to make good on two very different promises he laid out in 2020: to restore normal government following the chaos of Donald Trump’s presidency and to govern as a mainstream Democrat in a party that has become increasingly liberal over the last decade. For the most part, he has found ways to walk that line.
He has succeeded in large part by running a highly professional — albeit strictly partisan — White House and administration. The team has mostly avoided scandal. Just as important, the administration has dodged the kinds of leaks over policy in-fighting that often signal internal divisions. It’s a sharp contrast with not only the constant chaos of the Trump administration but also with some troubled periods of the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton presidencies, when such clashes often foreshadowed policy failures.
Biden himself is still prone to the gaffes that have always plagued him; that may be why he has been less likely to take questions from the media than any president since Ronald Reagan.