Will Americans Accept a White House That Pleads Helpless on Inflation?

Faced with skyrocketing inflation, the Biden administration has settled on a message unique in 245 years of American leadership: There’s nothing we can do, so just suffer and blame someone else. The many someones the administration points to include Russia, President Trump, Republicans, oil companies, meat packers, corporations, Covid-19 — a Lazy Susan of scapegoats far from the ends of Pennsylvania Avenue controlled by Democrats.For months, White House allies have lamented that the president lacks a “message,” as if they can find a magic incantation to convince voters that Happy Days are Here Again if they keep tossing out word salads. It’s style over substance at a time when substance is following actor Will Smith’s lead and slapping citizens every time they fill their tanks, buy groceries, or look at their incredible shrinking 401(k)s.If the president wishes to send a message, he doesn’t need to turn to another leftist focus group such as the one that took six months to come up with the laughable moniker “MAGA King,” which Mr. Trump soon embraced.Americans don’t want a pundit-in-chief slinging slogans. They want accountability. Yet while blaming others, not one person in this administration has been shown the door despite the debacles, because — as they say in sports — winning is a habit and so is losing.When administration members mocked Republican warnings on inflation, insisting the problem would be “transitory,” it was the economic equivalent of the New York Jets’s infamous “butt fumble.” Yet if the president accepts losing, why should anyone on his team try to reach the end zone?The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, by all rights earned a pink slip when said she was wrong “about the path that inflation would take.” Instead, she and all the other inflation deniers remain in positions where they can continue to ignore the flashing red light on the economy’s dashboard.It’s striking that the White House has settled on a message of impotence. Gone is President Kennedy’s declaration that we’d “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,” and send an American to stomp all over the face of the moon.Absent is the optimism of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who declared in the teeth of the Great Depression, “This nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.”Forget the call to arms of President Reagan’s inaugural address in 1981, the last time we suffered inflation this high, “to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds, to believe that together with God’s help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.” Instead, what we get now is the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, throwing up her hands on skyrocketing gas prices, saying, the president “has said and made clear that there’s not much left that he can do … there isn’t very much more to be done.” Mr. Biden scolds Americans with remarks like, “The idea we’re going to be able to click a switch, bring down the cost of gasoline, is not likely in the near term. Nor is it with regard to food,” as if anyone suggested such a switch exists.Even Democrats are growing frustrated with the shift from “the buck stops here” to “the buck never arrived because of the supply chain — and even if it did, we’re powerless to handle it, anyway.” One Democratic congressman, Ro Khanna, said he doesn’t share the view that “if inflation is there and gas goes to six bucks, there’s nothing we can do. I strongly disagree with that. I think there are roles that the government can play an intervention in an emergency to bring price stability.”President Biden is steeped in the slogan of the political animal: Perception is reality. That’s true in campaigns, but reality is reality when it comes to governing, and no “abracadabra” can change that fact. General George S. Patton said, “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.” Mr. Biden ran for the White House three times while promising victories if we’d give him the ball. Now he has it, and he can’t pass it away or convince us that he’s powerless to advance it.The big game requires big solutions, not big excuses.

Will Americans Accept a White House That Pleads Helpless on Inflation?

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