• Joe Biden sees America as beset by a crisis of self-confidence, and believes that with the country’s advantages, it can surmount problems and lead the world if united.
• Biden’s ability to demonstrate profound interpersonal empathy serves him in the work of presidenting, as he works with his opponents’ genuine desires and sees the world through their eyes.
• Biden’s approach to domestic legislation is based on understanding Republicans’ actual needs, and he has been able to wring a considerable amount of legislative juice out of unpromisingly small majorities.
• Biden is attempting to maintain a strategic advantage for the democratic bloc in key areas like chips and artificial intelligence, while understanding the need to manage all aspects of the situation and only get into dealmaking mode when it would be constructive.
• Biden has the smallest cultural footprint of any American president of my lifetime, and his project of unifying the country has to take place on a social and psychological level.
• Biden needs to be more present in our lives, more outspokenly normal, and more encouraging of other people to be more outspoken about their normal views.
Published January 24, 2023
Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post Joe Biden’s conditional optimism about America
