Is the state of the economy Joe Biden’s fault/doing? Jennifer Rubin thinks that it is, but also that it isn’t, depending on how the specific matter reflects on Joe Biden and where the reader is in her piece.
Rubin concedes that “a president cannot claim to have rescued the economy but bear little responsibility for inflation.” But, apparently, this rule does not apply to Jennifer Rubin. Thus, when she is touting job growth, it’s “the Biden economy,” but when Rubin is lamenting inflation, she is obliged to explain that, “if we want to play the blame game, we should start with the Federal Reserve, whose mandate is to control inflation.”
As for Biden’s “spending plan”? That “contributed a tiny sliver of the 7.9 percent inflation rate,” and yet it alone is is responsible for preventing “extended high unemployment,” keeping “thousands of businesses” open, saving “millions of Americans” from eviction and “millions of kids” out of poverty.
Rubin conclusion is worthy of Harry Houdini. She writes that “Biden’s economic record” — this refers to the good things that are happening — “is extraordinary,” but that it is “marred by inflation” that isn’t Biden’s fault. Happily, though, all is not lost, for “if the Fed brings down inflation without driving the country into a recession,” then its responsibility for the issue will disappear, and its achievement will be transferred to “Biden’s economic record,” which then “may be viewed as one of the most successful in history.”