WASHINGTON –
For five decades in Washington, Joe Biden knew that the way to make an impact was to be in the room where it happened. But in the second year of his presidency, some of Biden’s most impressive, legacy-defining legislative victories came by staying out of it.
A summer legislative blitz sent bipartisan bills targeting gun violence and boosting the nation’s high-tech manufacturing sector to Biden’s desk, and the US president is now on the verge of securing what he called the “last piece” of his economic agenda with approval from the Senate on a Democrat-only climate and prescription drug deal once thought dead. And counter to the intuition of the president, who has long touted his decades of experience on Capitol Hill, Biden aides attributed his victories to the fact that he publicly played the role of cheerleader rather than advocate in the legislature.
“In a 50-50 Senate, it’s just true that when the White House takes ownership of an issue, it scares a lot of Republicans,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “I think it’s all on purpose. When you step back and let Congress lead, and then apply pressure and help at the right time, that can be a much more effective strategy to get things done.”
Democrats and the White House hope a string of legislative victories, both bipartisan and nonpartisan, just four months before the November election will help revive their political fortunes by showing voters what they can accomplish with even the thinnest of majorities .
Biden opened 2022 with his legislative agenda at a standstill, his poll numbers down and a frank admission that he made a “mistake” in how he conducted himself in the role.
“Society doesn’t want me to be a ‘president-senator,'” he said. “They want me to be president and let senators be senators.”
Letting senators be senators was no easy task for Biden, whose political and personal identity is rooted in his formative years spent in that chamber. He spent 36 years as a senator from Delaware and eight more as Senate president, when he was prized for his ties to Capitol Hill and his insights as Barack Obama’s vice president.
While Biden took a step back, he let his aides do much of the direct talking. His legislative strategy, instead, focused more on using his role as president to provide strategic strokes of urgency for his agenda with both lawmakers and voters.
In the estimation of many of his aides and advisers, leaving the Senate was key to his subsequent success. Heightened expectations for Democrats, who hold a precarious majority in Congress but still have unified control of Washington, have dragged Biden down among his supporters, who have wanted more ambitious action.
The sometimes unpleasant horse-trading required to reach consensus often leaves the president deep in the weeds and uninspired. And the dramatic breakdowns of the negotiations on the way to the final deal proved all the more enticing because Biden himself was a party to the negotiations.
In the spring of 2021, Biden made a big show of negotiating directly with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, RW.Va., on an infrastructure bill, only to have negotiations collapse over the scope of the package and how to finance it. At the same time, a separate bipartisan group was quietly meeting on its own, discussing how to overhaul the nation’s transportation, water and broadband systems. After the White House gave initial approval and then worked out the final details with senators, that became the version that was signed into law.
The president then tried to strike a deal on massive social spending and a climate package with Sen. Joe Manchin, going so far as to invite the West Virginia lawmaker to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, when the conservative Democrat abruptly broke off the talks in an interview with Fox News . Manchin would later pick up the talks again, this time with only Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the two would eventually reach a deal that the Senate approved Sunday after more than a year of legislative wrangling.
In late 2021, White House aides persuaded the president to keep quiet about his conversations with Hill, as part of a deliberate shift to move negotiations on his legislative agenda out of the public eye. The West Wing, after being quick with the news that Biden had called that lawmaker or invited the group to the White House for a meeting, remained silent.
The new approach drew criticism from the press, but the White House bet that the public was not engaged in the details and would reward the results.
Biden and his team are “using the bully pulpit and working closely with Congress to fight for policies that lower costs for families and fight inflation, strengthen our competitiveness against China, act on gun violence” and help veterans, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said. “He has also directed his Cabinet, senior staff and legislative team to continuously engage with key lawmakers as we work together to achieve what may soon be the most productive legislative record of any president” since Lyndon Johnson.
Some of the changes, White House aides said, also reflect the changing dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has kept Biden in Washington for most of 2021; his meetings with lawmakers were one of the few ways to show he was working. As the pandemic eased and Biden was able to return to holding more in-person events with voters and interest groups, he was able to use those settings to push his message directly to the people.
The subtle transformation didn’t immediately pay dividends: Biden’s approval rating only continued to slide amid legislative momentum and rising inflation.
Yet over time, Biden’s decision to embrace the role of sidekick rather than chief negotiator — which met with mixed success — began to pay off: the first substantive arms restrictions in nearly three decades, a move to boost domestic production of semiconductor computer chips , and care of veterans exposed to toxic burns.
White House officials credited Biden’s emotional speech after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, with helping lawmakers take action on gun violence — and even his push for broader measures than went into the bill, giving an opportunity for the Republican Party to reach a compromise. And they point to a steady stream of speeches over months emphasizing the need to lower prescription drug costs or take action on the climate, issues that remain in the national conversation amid legislative changes.
In turn, Democratic and Republican lawmakers say that by withdrawing directly from the talks, Biden has given senators a chance to reach consensus among themselves without the distraction of the White House, which may have repeatedly pushed for something that would be unachievable for Republicans or could be seen as compromising by some Democrats.
“The president kind of said we’re staying out,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, referring to the arms talks earlier this year. “I think that was helpful.”
Remoteness, however, by no means means that the administration is absent.
Instead of being in the room as the arms deal came together, White House aides stayed by the phone, explaining how the administration is likely to interpret and regulate the law that senators are drafting. Murphy spoke with White House officials daily, and when the Connecticut senator met with Biden in person in early June to offer an update, the president never gave him an ultimatum on what he wanted or didn’t want to sign — continuing to defer to lawmakers. .
At another point during the arms talks, rumors surfaced that the administration was considering barring the Pentagon from selling certain types of surplus ammunition to arms dealers, who then sell the ammunition commercially, according to two people familiar with the discussions. But Republicans, chiefly Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, have urged the White House to scrap those plans because it would run counter to the parameters of what negotiators have discussed on arms, the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said of to discuss details in private negotiations.
The White House eventually did, issuing a statement to a conservative publication that no such executive order on ammunition was being considered.
On the semiconductor package, which Biden plans to sign on Tuesday, the administration held classified briefings for lawmakers that highlighted China’s growing influence in the computer chip sector and the national security implications. Republicans have been in regular contact with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a Biden staffer who has developed a warm relationship across the aisle.
And on the Democrats’ climate and health care package, Manchin stressed that it was impossible to craft legislation of this magnitude without input from the White House, though he did not engage directly with Biden until the end, when the president urged Manchin to let him know that The White House would support his agreement with Schumer, according to an official familiar with the conversation.
Biden also stayed out of last-minute discussions involving Sen. Kirsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and she and the president did not speak even as Democrats finalized a deal that met her demands.
“At heart, Joe is a U.S. senator,” said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., the top Democrat author of the fuel pit legislation who also helped craft the infrastructure bill last year. “So he understands that letting it work is how you do it.”
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