David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s top campaign strategist, recently critiqued President Joe Biden’s approach to the economy. “His desire to claim credit is a huge obstacle to connecting with voters on this issue,” Axelrod told The Wall Street Journal, “We learned this in 2011 and 2012. You can cite data until the cows come home, but what counts is how people are perceiving the economy.”
Axelrod’s memory is a little fuzzy.
The most electric speech of the 2012 Democratic National Convention was former president Bill Clinton’s data-anchored stemwinder bestowing credit on Obama for four years of economic improvement.
First, he made the broader argument that Democrats, in general were more trustworthy on the economy than Republicans: “Since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats, 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private sector jobs. So, what’s the job score? Republicans, 24 million; Democrats, 42 [million].”
Then Clinton tallied the numbers over the previous four years: “In 2010, as the president’s recovery program kicked in, the job losses stopped, and things began to turn around. The Recovery Act saved or created millions of jobs and cut taxes — let me say this again — cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. And, in the last 29 months, our economy has produced about 4 1/2 million private sector jobs. We could have done better, but last year, the Republicans blocked the president’s job plan, costing the economy more than a million new jobs. So, here’s another job score. President Obama: plus 4 1/2 million. Congressional Republicans: zero.”
He credited Obama with “more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs” in the same period, “the first time manufacturing jobs have increased since the 1990s.” He praised the auto industry bailout and noted Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s opposition to it, creating another scoring opportunity: “There are now 250,000 more people working in the auto industry than on the day the companies were restructured … Here’s another job score: Obama, 250,000; Romney, zero.”
Obama didn’t hesitate to use data to take credit in his subsequent acceptance speech. He repeated the manufacturing jobs number cited by Clinton. He touted how we “have doubled our use of renewable energy” and how “thousands of Americans have jobs today building wind turbines and long-lasting batteries.” He bragged that “millions of students are paying less for college today because we finally took on a system that wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on banks and lenders.”
The chest-thumping was leavened with humility and recognition of continued hardship, as when Obama admitted, “I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs … While I’m proud of what we’ve achieved together, I’m far more mindful of my own failings.” But taking credit for accomplishment was necessary to frame a choice for voters “between a strategy that reverses this progress or one that builds on it.”
The convention speeches proved powerful in changing perceptions of Obama’s economic record. In the CBS/New York Times poll, 39 percent of voters approved of Obama’s handling of the economy before the convention, and 54 percent disapproved. Afterward, those numbers were 45 and 47 percent, respectively.
The campaign kept at it. One of the re-election campaign’s closing ads, narrated by Morgan Freeman, further argued for building on past success. Invoking economic progress, the winddown of the Iraq War, and the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, Freeman gravely intoned, “Every president inherits challenges. Few have faced so many. Four years later our enemies have been brought to justice. Our heroes are coming home. Assembly lines are humming again. There are still challenges to meet, children to educate, a middle class to rebuild. But the last thing we should do is turn back now.” Obama’s poll numbers on the economy stayed slightly underwater, but that proved good enough for re-election.
Why did this messaging eventually work? Yes, Obama, Clinton, and Freeman are good communicators. And yes, Romney was a flawed candidate. But at bottom, Obama had a factually accurate story to tell about economic improvement that we know voters are inclined to embrace. They didn’t coldly cite data to scold an ungrateful electorate but used key numbers to anchor a compelling narrative that instilled optimism in the electorate.
Storytelling is necessary because no president presides over a perfect economy. With the rise of a 24-7 media culture, stories about the negative aspects of the economy tend to circulate. Still, over the past 100 years, incumbents who preside over improving economies have always been re-elected.
As I’ve previously written, Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “Morning in America” campaign portrayed an idyllic economy, with “more men and women [going] to work than ever before in our country’s history” and strongly implied that “with interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980” young families were easily buying homes and “can look forward with confidence to the future.” In reality, the 7.5 percent unemployment rate was the same as on Election Day 1980, and the average 30-year mortgage rate of 14.36 percent was slightly higher.
However, both metrics had improved since the first half of Reagan’s first term, which was throttled by a recession. Furthermore, inflation had decreased dramatically since the Carter presidency (thanks to those high interest rates), and Gross Domestic Product growth was very strong. The economy was unquestionably improving, so Reagan was in a good position to argue things were better than four years ago, even if he stretched to make the case and ignored the economy’s remaining weak spots.
Like Obama and Reagan (and Clinton), Biden entered office with an economy in shambles. Even if you want to argue that Trump doesn’t deserve blame for the pandemic-ravaged economy of 2020, that doesn’t change the fact that Biden began his presidency with a titanic economic disaster and got right to work to fix it.
Beyond encouraging vaccination to curtail the pandemic, he provided Americans with direct economic aid via the American Rescue Plan Act. He helped remedy the supply chain disruptions that fueled inflation worldwide and gave the Federal Reserve a free hand to impose higher interest rates, lowering inflation. To further tackle corporate price-gouging, he’s imposing rules that go after “junk fees” and directed the Federal Trade Commission to prevent monopolizing corporate mergers.
What’s the result? Improved economic growth. Fifteen million net new jobs. Near record-low unemployment. Wages outpacing inflation. Stock market booming.
And yet, public perception remains deeply detached from reality. A new Harris poll finds that 56 percent wrongly think we’re in a recession, 49 percent wrongly think the stock market is down, and 49 percent believe wrongly that unemployment is at a 50-year high.
Of course, Americans have some reason to be negative. Inflation has cooled, yet prices are considerably higher today than four years ago. And the higher interest rates that tamped down inflation are frustrating to home buyers and other potential borrowers (but benefit savers). But as 2012 and 1984 show, the fact that the economy is imperfect is no reason for an incumbent president to ignore economic improvement
Oddly, Axelrod is ignoring the critical lesson from the 2012 campaign: perception of the economy can also be improved. Not by bludgeoning the public with spreadsheets or ignoring human struggles but by using data to weave a reassuring narrative of how far we’ve come and how we can build on success.
For an incumbent like Biden, selling the economy is not a choice but a necessity. If you can’t convince voters that you have helped the economy in the last four years, then you don’t have much of a case for re-election beyond “the other guy is worse.” In this case, the other guy has his own economic track record, which, to many Americans, is good. In fact, Biden might consider tackling this perception too, explaining how Trump was merely handed a growing economy painstakingly mended by the Obama-Biden administration while Trump bequeathed him an economic dumpster fire.
And, to reiterate a point I made last week, the Biden campaign should circumvent a national media prone to negativity and assemble an army of regular Americans willing to give Biden credit in their local media outlets.
Biden has a story to tell, and it’s a good one. He should tell it without hesitation or apology.
