Ever underestimated, Biden rides a wave of good economic news into Chicago

Last week the inflation rate fell below 3 percent for the first time in three years, the S&P 500 had its best week of the year, and an agreement reducing the price Medicare and its recipients pay for ten of the most widely used medications was announced.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that despite the extravagant promises both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have made in the past week, it could be a long time before the next president sees a week with as much economic good news as the one just past.

Which brings us to the man honored on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, the man whose departure from the ticket has sparked an eruption of enthusiasm from Democrats, the man Trump can’t stop obsessing over, Sleepy Joe, Dark Brandon, President Joe Biden.

“For the longest time, I was too damn young,” Biden, who became a senator when he was 30, said last week at his first joint appearance with Harris after dropping out of the race.”Now, I’m too damn old.”

For all the unsourced reports about him being embittered, Biden looked in that appearance like someone who’d had an enormous weight lifted from his shoulders. He still has six months left in office and some big ambitions, so it may be a bit too soon for any sweeping pronouncements about his career. But it’s not too soon to start counting up what we’ll miss when he’s gone.

That process hasn’t quite started yet. Biden’s speech to the convention got pushed to the back of an overloaded first night so that his farewell ended after midnight. The Trump campaign is still running an ad showing Harris praising Bidenomics. As if, with a soft landing in sight, that’s supposed to be a bad thing. The Harris campaign, for its part, has signaled that it wants to make a clean break with the president on economic issues, although much of her economic program sounds like his initiatives, only faster and more.

Trump made a number of sweeping promises in what was billed as a speech on the economy last week in Asheville, N.C. After pledging to bring energy costs down by 50 to 70 percent in a year, or maybe 18 months, he made a telling, mid-speech adjustment: “If it doesn’t work out, you’ll say, “Oh, well, I voted for him, and he still got it down a lot.””

So much for strict accountability. Trump seems to understand that voters’ opinions on economic issues have become so colored by partisanship that, like horseshoes, close enough is sufficient.

Trump has also fantasized on Truth Social about an embittered Biden coming to the convention in Chicago and attempting to wrest back the nomination from Harris. Remember that Trump was already focused on Biden in 2017 when he made that famous call to Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Biden is the only politician other than Hillary Clinton whom Trump has run against. Those late-night, all-cap postings seem to reflect genuine shock on his part at suddenly running against someone else.

The most widely expressed sentiment in polls this year has been that both candidates are too old, and the June 27 CNN debate in Atlanta ensured that Biden would be the first, but possibly not the last, to feel the inevitable effect. This election has so far been a referendum on generational change, and Biden’s decision to drop out was the first result.

We can now begin the media countdown to the first wave of stories about Washington losing its institutional memory. This was going to take place anyway, with the departure of many seasoned government officials of Biden’s generation. But precisely because Biden’s experience has been so undervalued, it will be noticed when we don’t have a leader whose personal knowledge of the Middle East, for instance, goes back to Gold Meir.

“I’m going to say something outrageous. I know more foreign leaders by their first names and know them well than anyone else alive. Just because I’m so damn old,” Biden said Monday night.

We’re going to miss that when it’s gone.