Editorial written by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Board
It was Ronald Reagan who first posed the quintessential campaign question, during the sole 1980 presidential debate, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” America’s answer would soon expel Jimmy Carter from the White House in a historic landslide.
Donald Trump’s campaign is now using the same question against President Joe Biden. It’s a strategy that, this time, relies heavily on national amnesia.
Four years ago this month was the officially recognized start of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, which would ultimately see a far higher death rate in America than in other advanced countries.
It’s unknowable how much then-President Trump’s self-focused, politically obsessed mishandling of the crisis contributed to that excess death and suffering. But can anyone who recalls those chaotic, confrontational, often counter-factual daily presidential press conferences back then honestly doubt it was a significant factor?
Trump refused early on to acknowledge scientific warnings that this was a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, predicting against all evidence that the death toll wouldn’t exceed double digits. As the body count escalated, he engaged in petty political spats with Democratic governors, suggesting at one point that “they have to treat us well” if they want federal emergency assistance.
Trump’s administration does deserve credit for its record-quick development of the COVID vaccine — which makes it all the more ironic, and tragic, that his irresponsible embrace of anti-science hokum caused much of his base to reject vaccination.
Trump himself, desperate for a silver bullet, continued to publicly promote use of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine even after his own FDA found it non-effective in treating COVID and possibly dangerous. A recent French study found that close to 17,000 people in the U.S. and five other countries may have died in the first pandemic wave because they turned to the drug Trump was pushing in defiance of the science.
Trump was tested by a historic crisis in a way few presidents are — Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, and only a handful of others quickly come to mind. Does anyone not encumbered by partisan-colored glasses really believe Trump passed?
It was, admittedly, an epic challenge. So it’s fair to consider whether Americans were better off under Trump before the pandemic was dropped into his lap.
Trump’s first three years did indeed see a booming economy, with rising employment and falling inflation — positive trends that were essentially moving along the same trajectories they had during the Obama recovery that Trump inherited.
Even though there was no economic need for a big federal intervention in the economy at that point (in fact, quite the opposite), Trump signed into law the massive Republican tax cut for the rich in 2017 that has added some $2 trillion to the deficit. So much for fiscal responsibility.
On the world stage, Trump virtually collapsed U.S. global stature with a foreign policy that was impetuous and lurching. His needless spats with our NATO allies — and his deeply troubling (and continuing) acquiescence to Russian leader Vladimir Putin — set a nervous world further on edge.
The impact at home of Trump’s pugilistic, malicious brand of politics on America’s culture cannot be overstated. We became a noticeably angrier country under his watch, as he turned political differences personal, attacking fellow politicians and citizens alike with public belittling, childish name-calling and other tactics once considered beneath the presidency.
Remember his declaration that there were “fine people on both sides” at Charlottesville — a deadly conflict in which one side was dominated by antisemitism-spouting white nationalists?
Remember when he told four congresswomen of color (three of them American-born) to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came?”
Remember — most of all — the days we could still tell ourselves that no American president had ever, nor would ever, attempt to violently overthrow an election in order to keep power?
Of course, the are you better off question must necessarily consider not just the way things were under the previous administration, but the way they are now.
It’s a question that, for many today, seems driven by perception as much as data. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently noted, multiple recent polls show the same Americans who declare (in contrast to most economic data) that the U.S. economy is faltering report a far more positive assessment when asked about their own economic situations.
Yes, today’s inflation rate of a little more than 3% remains higher than the roughly 2% pre-pandemic average — and, yes, Biden shares some responsibility for that because of his stimulus spending.
But a much bigger factor was pandemic disruption to the global supply chain. The inflation rate has plunged since its mid-2022 high of around 9%, and remains far lower than in our peer countries. And that stimulus spending has undoubtedly contributed to continued economic growth that has so surprised economists.
Yes, Biden was slow to recognize the latest border crisis. But it is just that — the latest in a series of border crises, stretching back decades, caused by congressional inaction. Biden recently brokered a historic bipartisan deal that would have gone far to address the problem if not for Trump’s self-serving sabotage of it.
Yes, Biden botched the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, with tragic results. But he has since displayed a much-needed steadiness in foreign policy: repairing the damage Trump did to our NATO relationships, standing with Ukraine, and supporting Israel while reasonably pushing for restraint and a peace process.
Reagan’s four years ago question is normally a referendum on the incumbent alone. But because of the unusual dynamics of this race — incumbent versus predecessor — it’s a binary test.
As such, voters will have more to go on than usual in deciding whether they’d personally be better off under a Trump or a Biden presidency going forward.
Inflation rates and the rest are inevitably part of the equation. But we would hope that assessment would take into account the personality-driven chaos of the former, the imperfect but stable normalcy of the second — and the fundamental character of each.
