Doris Kearns Goodwin: The Economy Under Biden Is ‘Growing More Than It Did Even in Pre-Trump Covid’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
MELBER: “So, we will get to your book, it’s all related. As you see when we look back other presidents both during and directly after crises have seized on them to great effect policy and in the politics, in the public acclaim they’ve gotten. How is President Biden doing on that measure, and is it different with the economy where everyone lived it and this pandemic where I would say anecdotally, I’m not a historian but anecdotally a lot of people want to forget it.”
GOODWIN: “You know, it’s so interesting there is a mystery of leadership even before FDR was able to institute the New Deal that first inaugural address alone instilled confidence in the American people. He said, as you were saying earlier, he didn’t make light of it. He said only a foolish optimist would deny the brutal realities of the moment, but the only thing we have to fear — He famously said — is fear itself. But then he said it’s not your fault American people, it’s leadership that’s failed and I’m here to provide that leadership. With that one address confidence was projected, his confidence is the American people. That night they said we have a leader in headlines, the government still lives. A man wrote in among hundreds of thousands of letters saying my roof has fallen off, my dog ran away, my wife is mad at me, I’ve lost my job, but everything’s okay because you are there. That’s the mystery of leadership. He hadn’t even done anything yet but projected his own confidence. So much happened with what President Biden has done. It has had a lot of largeness to it, it will affect us in the future, but still somehow it hasn’t fully translated into the fact that the people are giving him credit for the fact that the economy has gotten better. It’s growing more than it did even in pre-Trump Covid. Covid, I think, did something to us to take our confidence away from ourselves, and nothing seems quite the same, and I don’t think the trust is in government and the institutions the way it once was certainly during FDR’s time. So, it’s much harder for him to gain the traction, I think, because we’re in such a different era.”