Joe Biden’s finally had a great week – and nobody’s talking about it

The president has had a series of PR successes, but the raid on Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago is all anyone can talk about. Still, that might not be the worst thing for Biden

(AP)

It’s been a pretty solid week for Joe Biden. On Tuesday, he signed the CHIPS and Science Act to support the manufacturing of semiconductors. On Wednesday, he signed the PACT Act, which would allow veterans who experienced health complications after being exposed to toxic burn pits to receive health care benefits. That same day, he received welcome news that inflation numbers went virtually unchanged in the past month, according to the latest Consumer Price Index report.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that his approval rating has jumped to its highest point since June. And now, an overwhelming majority, if not a unanimous one, of House Democrats is expected to finally pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the keystone spending bill that progressives spent the better part of a year pushing for while moderate and conservative Democrats lobbied to curb its size and price tag.

The problem for the president? None of this good news for him is dominating the headlines.

Rather, most people are focusing on the unfolding story of the FBI executing a search warrant on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach. (And as if that wasn’t enough, they’ve been focusing on the news that Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment rights 440 times in his sworn deposition in the New York Attorney General’s probe of whether his real estate company committed tax fraud.)

So far, the Biden team has mostly deflected questions about the investigation. This is the proper move; while the president nominates the attorney general, the Justice Department is supposed to be independent, and it would be inappropriate for the White House to comment on an ongoing investigation. That’s before even taking into account that the department is investigating a former president.

Meanwhile, the department itself has ended up under incredible pressure from the news cycle. Attorney General Merrick Garland yesterday delivered a rare statement, in which he confirmed the fact he personally approved the search warrant against Trump and announced that he had asked a court to unseal it owing to “substantial public interest”. But his announcement came only after a torrent of sound and fury from the right-wing political-media industrial complex, a spectacle that the mainstream media has been covering as a story in itself.

In a bizarre way, as far as Biden is concerned, the GOP’s rush to circle the wagons for the former president could not have come at a more opportune time. Since news of the raid broke on Monday, Republicans have for the most part been too busy defending Trump to poke holes in the Inflation Reduction Act. That makes a marked difference from their relentless insistence that the American Rescue Plan that Biden signed last year contributed to soaring inflation.

The GOP also hasn’t had the chance to hammer home that the latest figures still show inflation jumped 8.5 per cent in the past 12 months. Neither have they been able to shout about the fact that while the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers didn’t increase in the past month, the change was largely down to a fall in gas prices masking a continued rise in food prices.

And more than that, Republicans haven’t been able to play on the fact that the Inflation Reduction Act is mostly a product of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer cutting Biden out of his negotiations with Senator Joe Manchin so that the two men could finally strike a deal that brought every Democratic Senator on board.

But for all that he’s been let off the hook for the less flattering events of recent weeks, Biden does not necessarily benefit from a lack of attention. When he ran for president, he famously said that were he elected, Americans wouldn’t have to worry about his tweets, promising them a return to civility and normalcy instead. That’s proven true in many respects – but it also means that even as he is on the cusp of a major political victory, the president’s opponents have a void to fill.