President Biden’s anti-inflation plan has crashed like a lead balloon. Even the apology tour, with leading administration players begging for forgiveness for having missed the inflation threat for nearly 14 months, looks more like a hostage video than a real apology.
The president, the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, and others will not accept the reality that their modern monetary theory and radical progressive policies — excessive government spending, welfare state expansion, the war against fossil fuels, the regulatory attacks on businesses, and the money printing by the Federal Reserve — are the root causes of the high inflation we are facing, and will continue to be problematic for a good, long while.
It’s not Vladimir Putin to blame, and it’s not pandemic supply shortages: It’s the progressive campaign against free-market capitalism and the failed big-government, socialist attempt to transform America into a state-run economy.
Mr. Biden has a 35 percent economic approval rating, according to the Real Clear Politics average, and his recent increase in inflation messaging is not going to change that. He’s got a lot of other problems as well.
His failing presidency is being rejected by the voters on virtually all accounts. His administration got inflation wrong. It was always a dollar short and a day late on Ukraine. More recently, it bungled the baby formula crisis.
In fact, the president convened a meeting of the baby formula producers and didn’t bother to invite the country’s largest one, Abbott. Really? Is that the Biden version of a public-private partnership?
Kind of reminds me of when, a while back, the president convened a meeting with the electric vehicle makers. Remember that? All the big guns were there except, wait a minute, somehow they forgot to invite Elon Musk, whose Tesla is by far the biggest electric carmaker.
This was even before Mr. Musk came out in favor of Twitter free speech, and even before he said he was so disgusted with the mean Democrats that he’s voting Republican this fall.
Elon Musk’s sin way back then was that he actually had a non-union factory. Oh my goodness. This is vintage Biden stuff. You gotta fit the “woke mode.” In order to succeed in Biden-land and stay on the inside track, you have to hate fossil fuels, rich people, large and small businesses, and wealth, and you have to love the big welfare state, over-regulation, high taxes, cheap money, and, well, you get the picture.
Mr. Biden has failed at the border. He’s failed at the gas station. He’s failed with parents. He’s failed with cops. He’s failed in foreign policy, too.
In some sense, the beginning of the collapse of the Biden presidency occurred with his extraordinary mishandling of Afghanistan — as our military was ordered to rush out of the country, as we fled the Bagram airport, and all of the expensive weapons hardware that we left behind, as our military left before our civilians, or their friends, and as even today the U.S. perfidy has still left probably thousands of friends and collaborators in Afghanistan at the mercy of the Taliban.
Lately, there is a lot of talk about White House staff resignations and replacements, and political arrow-shooting at one another, as they try to dodge the bullets of failure.
I read about 21 black staffers who are resigning because of a lack of promotion and attention. I also read reports about a top treasury official and an NEC deputy leaving. Both were architects of the Biden tax hike plans, which were doomed to failure as “Build Back Better” never passed, and never will pass.
I can’t vouch for any of these personnel changes. As someone who has served twice in the White House, I don’t much like to gossip.
For me, the essential issue is not who’s up and who’s down in the West Wing pecking order. The essential issue is that the radical progressive policies of this administration have failed. The culprit is the president, and only the president.
For the past nearly 50 years, I’ve heard people talk about how this president is being manipulated and that president is being manipulated, and this one is taking orders from one of his big shots — blah, blah, blah. Let me tell you: I worked for President Reagan and later for President Trump, and it is the president who makes the final decision in the Oval Office.
Nobody told Joe Biden to run as a moderate, and then govern as Bernie Sanders and AOC. If his advisers suggested this strategy, which has failed so badly, it was Mr. Biden who agreed to follow it. And that’s why his administration is falling apart.
Big-government socialism doesn’t work. Modern monetary theory doesn’t work. Radical woke progressivism doesn't work.
America never wanted to be transformed, culturally or economically.
You know which person in the White House has seen his stock fall the most? Who all intelligent fingers are being pointed at? That’s easy. His name is Joe Biden.
Larry Kudlow was the Director of the National Economic Council under President Trump from 2018–21. His Fox Business show "Kudlow" airs at 4 p.m. and his radio show airs on 770 ABC from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Saturdays.
From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News. Reprinted with Mr. Kudlow's permission.
