Earlier this year, the Washington Monthly published a special issue with a package of articles and analyses comparing the accomplishments of Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Our assessments were not based on our policy preferences, but on how successful each was at implementing their respective policy agendas.
We determined that Biden was more successful, outdoing Trump in 14 issue areas, while Trump only bested Biden in three.
My contribution to the package was an assessment of their overall legislative output. I concluded: “Biden took bipartisanship seriously. Trump did not.”
“Bipartisanship is often frustrating and does not always produce efficacious policies,” I acknowledged. “Yet nearly every president pursues bipartisanship and its inevitable compromises. Presumably, they do so mainly because legislative math requires it, but it also usually helps notch lasting achievements.”
Based on what we have heard from Trump and Kamala Harris on the campaign trail, Trump has not learned any lessons from his limp legislative performance, while Harris is trying to build on her mentor’s productive approach.
I’ll explain further, but first, here’s what’s leading the Washington Monthly website:
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What Trump and Vance Could Do to What’s Left of Reproductive Freedom: Caroline Fredrickson, of the Open Markets Institute, details what could happen if Trump is able to push the federal judiciary further rightward. Click here for the full story.
Harris Wants Medicare to Cover Home Care While Trump Will Roll Back Obamacare: Merrill Goozner, publisher of the GoozNews Substack newsletter, compares the health care plans from the two presidential candidates. Click here for the full story.
Do You Have Questions About When and Where to Vote, Candidates and Issues Up and Down the Ballot? We’ve Got You Covered.: Joshua A. Douglas, University of Kentucky law professor, shares the best places to get information about down-ballot races and referenda. Click here for the full story.
Imagining Trump with a Republican-Controlled Congress and the Roberts Court: James D. Zirin, a former federal prosecutor, previews the potential carnage to democracy. Click here for the full story.
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As I noted in my article, Biden’s embrace of bipartisanship as president was—for someone who preached the gospel of bipartisanship for decades as a senator—unexpectedly slow in coming.
He started his administration with a bill, the American Rescue Plan Act, that passed on a party-line vote, using the arcane budget reconciliation process to skirt the Senate filibuster.
Then he worked with House Democrats to hold up the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, in hopes of leveraging it for the super-sized yet partisan Build Back Better bill.
Only when that gambit sputtered did he instruct the House holdouts to stand down and get the Senate bill passed. From that point forward, Biden’s approach to Congress was more traditionally bipartisan as well as highly productive.
Harris doesn’t want a similar slow start to her bipartisan efforts.
Three weeks ago, Harris pledged to form a bipartisan council of policy advisers, in addition to having at least one Republican in her cabinet, to “put some structure” around the policy formation process. “Let’s, as I often say, kick the tires on ideas,” she said, “Because the best ideas will survive those kinds of challenges.”
No doubt Harris is partially driven by short-term politics. Her campaign strategy hinges on wooing moderates, independents and Trump-fatigued Republicans. She is eagerly campaigning with Liz Cheney despite complaints from a smattering of leftist voices.
Polls bear out Harris’s logic.
In the last six national polls I have seen with data broken out by ideology, she is winning liberals by an average of 90 to 8, which is a touch better than Biden’s 2020 performance according to exit polls.
But her average with moderates is 57 to 39, whereas Biden won them 64 to 34. Harris needs to hustle harder for the moderate vote, and her efforts to date haven’t caused any bleed on her left flank.
Yet the Harris pledge should not be presumed to be about electoral politics alone. Working alongside Biden, she saw first hand how the bipartisan skeptics were proven wrong, and how getting a modicum of Republican support was often essential to securing ultimate passage.
While Harris campaigns with Cheney to appeal to Republicans, Trump is trying to pick up Democrats by linking arms with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
But Trump has done nothing to suggest Kennedy would help him pass legislation. He suggests giving Kennedy expansive executive powers. Trump said at Sunday’s infamous Madison Square Garden rally, “I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”
In fact, Trump rarely discusses the legislative process at all, let alone any acceptance of limits on executive power. True to his authoritarian tendencies, he mainly promises to “fix” America himself.
A telling contrast can be found in the policy agendas each candidate has posted on their websites.
Trump links to the Republican National Committee platform, which was dictated by his team and described as the “Trump Republican Platform.”
There are only two instances of the word “pass.” One is a clear reference to legislation, pledging Republicans would “pass the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act.” The other instance refers to the power of state governments to pass abortion bans.
Tax legislation does get a mention: “Republicans will make permanent the provisions of the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act … We will eliminate Taxes on Tips for millions of Restaurant and Hospitality Workers, and pursue additional Tax Cuts.” (All weird capitalization is in the original.)
Otherwise, there are no clear references to legislation, only fuzzy promises.
You can find plenty of references to legislation in the Trump-adjacent Project 2025, so we know there are bills Trump’s allies would like to pass. But Trump has already betrayed a lack of skill, and lack of interest in developing the skill, in navigating the legislative process.
Moreover, as my colleague Rob Wolfe detailed, Trump was also incompetent in wielding executive power: “Among his administration’s attempts to actually remove regulations from the books, or add them, a staggering number—77.5 percent—were overturned in court. For comparison, other administrations lose these cases only about 30 percent of the time.” Telling a cabinet head to “go wild” isn’t enough to change federal rules.
Unlike Trump’s platform, Harris’s published economic agenda offers a basic understanding of how policymaking works, including explicit calls for legislation to ban price-gouging, stop monopolistic practices that increase home rents, establish a homebuilding tax credit for affordable housing, and expand the child tax credit.
The Harris plan includes “Independent Economic Analyses” showing her proposals would be better for the economy than Trump’s. One chart jumped out at me, showing employment growth under different election scenarios, including a “Harris & Divided Congress” scenario. To include it is a tacit acknowledgement a President Harris may have to compromise with Republican congressional leaders to get anything done.
Trump, supposedly the master of the “art of the deal,” has given no indication how he would work with Democratic leaders in a presidential sequel. But the original performance–the failed attempt at repealing Obamacare, the missed opportunity to cut a deal on immigration, the running “Infrastructure Week” jokes–tells us all we need to know.
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Best,
Bill Scher, Washington Monthly politics editor
