The George Costanza Presidency

With each expedient act, from climate policy to the Mideast, Joe Biden digs a deeper hole for himself.

By
Allysia Finley

In a classic “Seinfeld” episode, George Costanza bemoans that every decision he’s made has been wrong. His life, as a result, has turned out the opposite of what he intended.

Joe Biden might relate. His presidency probably hasn’t gone as he’d hoped. Two wars, a border crisis and near-record inflation have erupted. A Gallup poll last week found that confidence in his economic stewardship is lower than for any president this century other than George W. Bush during the height of the 2008 financial crisis.

But like George Costanza, Mr. Biden has only himself to blame. Both men create more trouble for themselves, as each poor decision leads to another. George’s schemes to woo women—say, by enlisting Elaine to take an IQ test for him—boomerang. So do the president’s ploys to win voters. Mr. Biden, like George, now risks getting dumped.

Consider the chain of expedient acts that led to the president’s threat last week to withhold weapons from Israel to appease his party’s leftists. Mr. Biden worries he’ll lose re-election if young progressives don’t turn out in November—or if they cast ballots for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Jill Stein. It isn’t an unreasonable concern. Young’uns never fell in love with Mr. Biden, and they increasingly resent being forced by party elders into a political marriage of convenience.

Yet Mr. Biden’s bigger problem is that the pandemic handouts that Democrats hoped would win them votes have backfired. Excessive spending has fueled inflation and led to the highest interest rates in a generation. Young people have been especially harmed because those who don’t own homes now can’t afford them. Mr. Biden boasted a 33% approval rating among voters under 30 in an Economist/YouGov poll last week. Only 24% of them said the economy was excellent or good. A mere 13% thought it is improving and 15% believed it will get better if Mr. Biden is re-elected.

By comparison, 36% believed it would improve if Donald Trump won in November. Young voters aren’t fond of the former president; they simply find Mr. Biden as attractive as George Costanza.

Mr. Biden has tried to boost his support with young people by canceling student debt. It hasn’t worked. His repeat rounds of debt forgiveness have instead infuriated Americans who didn’t go to college, grads who repaid their loans, and parents who made sacrifices to pay tuition.

Mr. Biden’s climate policies have proved similarly ineffective at energizing young voters, while alienating working-class Americans and fueling higher energy prices. The president in January surrendered to a small army of TikTokers calling for a halt to new liquefied-natural-gas export projects, without thinking how it would play with U.S. allies or workers whose jobs depend on the natural-gas industry, especially in Pennsylvania. This includes workers who produce steel for pipelines, as well as members of building-trades unions.

Then Mr. Biden charged forward with a de facto electric-vehicle mandate that is deeply unpopular, especially in Michigan, heart of the auto industry. A January poll by the Glengariff Group found that 74% of likely Michigan voters and a nearly equal share of independents strongly opposed such mandates.

EVs require less labor but more financial capital to produce. U.S. automakers have laid off thousands of employees to finance the government-forced EV transition. Ford in March announced plans to slash its hourly workforce at the Dearborn, Mich., factory that builds the F-150 Lightning amid slackening demand for the vehicles. Michigan has lost about 7,000 manufacturing jobs in the last year, while mining, logging and construction employment in Pennsylvania has declined by 4,000. No wonder Mr. Trump is leading him in these swing states.

Mr. Biden has tried to compensate for these unforced errors with working-class voters by opposing Nippon Steel’s acquisition of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel. While the United Steelworkers union cheered, the president’s intervention will discourage foreign investment that creates good-paying U.S. jobs. It’s also another snub to Japan, whose help the U.S. needs to contain a bellicose China.

Meantime, to counter higher energy prices caused partly by his anti-fossil-fuel policies, Mr. Biden has eased enforcement of oil sanctions on Iran and Russia. This has given America’s enemies more ammunition to attack Israel and Ukraine.

His flagging support among working-class voters, particularly in Michigan, has heightened the imperative to keep progressives under his collapsing tent. Hence, the embargo last week on U.S. weapons to Israel. This display of weakness will embolden America’s enemies and may result in more casualties.

Like George Costanza, Mr. Biden keeps digging his hole deeper the harder he works to get out of it. Perhaps he should take Jerry’s advice to George and do the opposite of what his instincts tell him.