NY Times columnist Krugman throws cold water on Biden’s recent successes: Not as ‘impressive’ as media claim

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In his latest column for the New York Times, economist and author Paul Krugman acknowledged that President Joe Biden has "accomplished a lot" in office but admitted that the accomplishments "don’t look as impressive when you compare them with the scale of the nation’s problems."

Krugman began by describing the recent flip in the media assessment of Biden's presidency after he signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law earlier this week. The columnist wrote, "Seriously, it has been amazing to watch the media narrative on the Biden administration change."

"Just a few weeks ago President Biden was portrayed as hapless, on the edge of presiding over a failed presidency. Then came the Inflation Reduction Act, a big employment report and some good news on inflation, and suddenly we’re hearing a lot about his accomplishments," he elaborated.

Krugman stated that he doesn’t agree with this sudden all-around praise of Biden’s performance. "But I still don’t think the media narrative gets it quite right. Biden has indeed accomplished a lot — in some ways more than he’s getting credit for, even now," he wrote. However, he noted, "On the other hand, America is a huge nation with a huge economy, and his policies don’t look as impressive when you compare them with the scale of the nation’s problems."

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NY Times columnist Paul Krugman claims President Biden's successes are overblown in the media. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

The columnist also observed that "at this point Biden is arguably benefiting from the soft bigotry of low expectations." He explained, "His policy achievements are big by modern standards, but they wouldn’t have seemed astounding in an earlier era — the era before the radicalization of the Republican Party made it almost impossible to pursue real solutions to real problems."

Taking a quick break from the sobering assessment of Biden’s performance, he admitted that Biden accomplished most of his "three main domestic policy goals: investing in America’s fraying infrastructure, taking serious action against climate change and expanding the social safety net." 

"He got most of two and a bit of the third," Krugman wrote, adding that Biden’s infrastructure bill from last year "gets remarkably little media attention," at least compared to the attention given to the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The author also noted that these "significant achievements" are "a big contrast with the last administration, whose only major domestic policy change was a tax cut that had almost no visible positive effects."

But, Krugman insisted, contextualizing Biden’s achievements in the grand scheme of things makes the media praise questionable: "But when I see news reports describe these laws as ‘massive’ or huge, I wonder whether the writers have done the math."

Krugman claimed that these spending bills will only add "a bit more than $1 trillion in public investment over 10 years," while he acknowledged that the "Congressional Budget Office expects cumulative gross domestic product to be more than $300 trillion over the next decade."

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman claimed that the Biden administration's legislative successes aren't as "massive" as media are reporting.  (Ricardo Rubio/Europa Press via Getty Images))

"So the Biden agenda will amount to around one-third of one percent of G.D.P. Massive it isn’t," he declared.

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Krugman also defended Biden from flack over his foreign policy blunders, saying that despite the failures in Afghanistan, "it looks to me as if the Biden administration has done a remarkable job assembling and holding together a coalition to help Ukraine resist Russian aggression."

He protected Biden from criticism on inflation as well, claiming that "countries, notably Britain, are also suffering from high inflation," and that "both the public and financial markets expect inflation to be brought under control."

Krugman ultimately assessed Biden’s performance as "routine." "What we’re getting from Biden should be routine in a wealthy, sophisticated nation; indeed, it was routine before the G.O.P. took its hard right turn," he said.

"At this point, however, competent, reality-based government comes as a shock," he concluded.

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WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 16: U.S. President Joe Biden (R) moves to give Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) (L) the pen he used to sign The Inflation Reduction Act with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) in the State Dining Room of the White House August 16, 2022 in Washington, DC. The $737 billion bill focuses on climate change, lower health care costs and creating clean energy jobs by enacting a 15% corporate minimum tax, a 1-percent fee on stock buybacks and enhancing IRS enforcement. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)