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Today we'd like to bring you an excerpt from a wonderful piece by our colleague Dylan Matthews — you'll find the crux of his argument (that Biden's tendency toward indecision wrecked his presidency) below, but we'd really recommend you check out the full, magazine-length version when you have a chance.

If you want to understand where Joe Biden’s presidency went wrong, start with the failure of Build Back Better.

Across two bills — the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan — Build Back Better sought to spend over $4 trillion across a decade on transportation, manufacturing and science, home care, clean energy, an expanded child tax credit, tuition-free community college, child care, and much more.

Little of this became law, of course. That Biden was not able to pass the maximal version of his agenda is not much of an indictment. No president passes everything they want. They have to prioritize, to choose which parts of the agenda are worthy of their political capital and effort and which are not.

What stands out about Biden is the degree to which his domestic record is characterized by a refusal to prioritize, a paralyzing fear of pissing off any Democratic faction that too often wound up winning nothing for any of them. 

The result is a failed presidency that left Biden without much of an enduring domestic policy legacy and made what accomplishments he can claim immensely vulnerable to the Republican trifecta taking over the government he led.

It’s a rather undignified end to the career of one of America’s longest-serving statesmen. One would think that a 44-year veteran of the Senate would do well precisely at the part of the presidency that demands strong leadership over the legislative process — and indeed, that was a major part of Biden’s case for himself in 2020. 

But the legislative process is where Biden failed. Because he simply refused to choose.

Biden’s missteps began at the very beginning, with legislation sometimes billed as a precursor and sometimes as a part of Build Back Better: the American Rescue Plan.

The $1.9 trillion bill, signed into law less than two months after Biden’s inauguration, was in some ways a triumph. It was markedly larger than the 2009 stimulus passed by his former boss.

It also was a direct cause of the inflation of 2022 and 2023, price hikes that in retrospect contributed to Donald Trump’s eventual victory in 2024. Exactly how much inflation the law caused is debatable, but one group of economists compared the US experience to that of European countries with less ambitious stimulus programs and attributed about 3 percentage points of inflation to the ARP.

That suggests that nixing the ARP wouldn’t have just helped avoid a Trump comeback — it possibly would have been better for workers. Inflation was high enough that the median worker saw incredibly weak wage growth, certainly weaker than under Trump or Obama’s second term. A more moderate stimulus, like the $618 billion package proposed by a group of Republican Senators in February 2021, could have returned employment to high levels without putting as much pressure on prices.

But Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was reportedly adamant that the bill include a slew of Democratic priorities that went nowhere during the Trump administration. Biden deferred to him, and the party charged ahead. 

As they crafted the package, Biden and his allies didn’t stop and ask: which of these measures is the most important? Which are the most potentially inflationary? Should we include provisions that would dial back or expand aid, depending on what happens with unemployment and inflation? 

It was the first indication of what a president who refuses to choose looks like.

Like the American Rescue Plan, BBB was less a coherent agenda than a hodgepodge of different priorities with their own Congressional champions. 

It was obvious from the start that not all of this could pass. Democrats never had a majority for this full agenda, and their majority was dependent on moderate Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) — then both Democrats. These two had to be wooed for any measure to earn majority support in Congress.

Frustratingly for the administration, the two senators’ desires were at cross purposes. Manchin was open to tax hikes on the rich but skeptical of the child tax credit and other “handouts,” while Sinema was open to those programs but hostile to tax hikes. Manchin was also insistent that any changes to safety net programs should be enacted permanently from the start.

There was an obvious way to square this circle: pass a relatively modest bill funded by revenue that Sinema could support.

There are many indications that Congressional leadership and the Biden administration badly bungled these negotiations. In mid-2021, Biden invited Manchin, Sinema, and a number of centrist House Democrats to the White House. According to Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns’s book This Will Not Pass, Biden announced to the group that Sinema had stated that the maximum Build Back Better bill she’d support would cost $1.1 trillion. Sinema was furious at Biden for betraying what she said was a “private conversation.” Biden then had to convince a Senator whose vote he desperately needed not to leave the room.

But the more telling error in that meeting was something else: “Each of you are saying ‘do fewer things and do them bigger,’ but you’re all saying different things,” Biden told the group of moderates, per Frank Foer’s The Last Politician. “And if you add up all your different things, it’s actually a pretty big number. If you add all this up, it’s well over $2 trillion.”

The advice Biden was getting was good. Build Back Better was trying to do too much. But his takeaway from this was that trying to do one thing well was a trap, because someone would still be mad at him for not doing their thing permanently.

This failure to make a choice, to decide what to prioritize and make the centerpiece of Build Back Better, was Biden’s greatest legislative mistake as president. It was precisely Biden’s job, in that situation, to state what one or two things out of the package he’d like to do permanently. Perhaps it was the child tax credit; then he could negotiate a deal with Manchin that addressed the latter’s concerns about work incentives. Perhaps it was universal pre-K. Perhaps it was the clean energy credits. But Biden was a man who could not choose.

This indecision repeatedly disrupted talks with Manchin, and reportedly led to Manchin becoming increasingly frustrated with Biden, who he apparently felt wasn’t staying true to his word.

The greatest missed opportunity of the whole debacle, though, was a framework Manchin presented in December 2021. The $1.8 trillion plan included $500 billion to $600 billion in climate spending (in the ballpark of what the IRA would eventually include), plus 10 years of universal pre-K, and it extended the ARP’s expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies for health insurance.

Biden did not take the deal as it was, which was fair. It’s a negotiation, after all. Instead, the White House issued a press release singling Manchin out for blame in holding up the package. Manchin announced he was abandoning the effort. The White House, in a fit of pique, sent out a remarkably pointless and petty release of their own accusing Manchin of operating in bad faith.

In the end, Biden didn’t get what he wanted. Manchin did, after Schumer’s revived the talks, with the White House far away. Thanks to Schumer and Manchin — not Biden — the Inflation Reduction Act was able to come together. 

There’s perhaps no more damning critique of the White House’s legislative strategy than the fact that a bill only came together when they got out of the way. Someone, it turns out, could choose: it just happened to be Joe Manchin, not the president.

Apu Gomes/Getty Images

An animal crisis: Humans aren’t the only creatures being negatively affected by California’s wildfires; animals are having a hard time, too. Sam Delgado explains what’s going on with our furry friends and how to help them.

Baby, baby … baby?: Birthrates are falling all over the world, a trend that is expected to continue. Why? No one knows for sure, but Miles Bryan spoke with someone who obsesses about birthrates to better understand one hypothesis. 

Upgrades incoming: My interactions with AI usually leave me less than impressed. Kelsey Piper makes the case that I’ve been paying attention to the wrong things, and that AI is getting better faster than it may seem.

A sad story: New York magazine has new, disturbing details about the sexual assault allegations against science fiction/fantasy writer Neil Gaiman. (Please note, this story contains vivid descriptions of sexual violence, emotional trauma, and self-harm.) [New York magazine]

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CA vs. Trump: California’s planning on setting aside $50M to fight Trump’s policies: $25M to combat his mass deportation plans, and $25M to clash with the incoming president in court. [Politico]

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Once a month, our friend — and financial wizard — Nicole Dieker Finley swoops in to answer a Vox reader’s question about money. This month, she’s back to assist someone trying to balance a plan to retire this year with the need to provide financial assistance to loved ones. Nicole’s response is chock-full of good advice for everyone, regardless of when you hope to retire.

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