Fourteen years ago, I told a well-informed friend that Barack Obama was considering picking Joe Biden as his running mate in the 2008 election. “You’ve got to be kidding,” came the riposte. “Biden is way past it.”Similar obituaries were being penned only two weeks ago as Biden’s poll numbers dropped below even Donald Trump’s nadir. Yet here we are. America’s oldest president can now boast of a stronger legislative record in less than two years than either Obama or Bill Clinton achieved in eight. It turns out that low expectations are Biden’s secret weapon.
None of this means Biden will be elected to a second term. But it is worth emphasising what he has done in less than half of one. In the coming days, Biden will sign America’s first serious attempt to tackle global warming. His predecessors tried it and failed. Clinton got nowhere close to persuading the Senate to ratify the Kyoto Treaty on climate change in 1999. Obama’s 2009 cap and trade bill also foundered. Trump, of course, scrapped the executive actions to which Obama resorted after failing on Capitol Hill. Trump also pulled the US out of the Paris agreement on climate change.
Biden has not only reversed Trump’s actions but is the first president to signal that the US means business on global warming. In contrast to Obama and Clinton, both of whom had large Senate majorities, Biden has done so with a 50:50 Senate. Perhaps lacking that cushion is good for party discipline.