If Joe Biden jumps in the race, and if 2020 is anything like the 1988 presidential primary, it will be “Make America Great Again,” minus the protectionism.
It was an unusually hot summer when Biden, then-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced he was running for president. He burned bright. Past plagiarism brought him low. He dropped out of the race after just three months.
That first failed presidential bid is worth revisiting not just because Biden believes he is the last best hope for Democrats to defeat President Trump. It is also worth examining because of how Biden defined his candidacy between the two economic poles of unfettered free market capitalism and a command economy.
Even before he was Uncle Joe, Biden didn’t have time for fanatical economic piety or cultist protectionism. Take a look at his June 1987 announcement speech, an address he made from the financially strong Wilmington, Del.: “We cannot accept the naivete of free traders who ignore the flagrant abuses of our trading partners,” Biden said, “nor can we accept the morally bankrupt, easy answer on protectionism — an answer that smacks of defeatism. Protecting one job today at the cost of ten of our children’s jobs tomorrow is unacceptable.”
Biden said that in 1987, when unemployment was just 5.7 percent, growth was 3.5 percent, and malaise was an ugly word the country had nearly forgotten. Things are different this side of the last economic panic. The numbers are even better, but jitters remain thanks to the great recession. But if an older and wiser Biden believes what a younger and more idealistic Biden believed, we are in for a wild 2020.
Biden wouldn’t just be to the right of the other, grumpier national uncle, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on trade. Biden would be to the right of the grumpy yet jovial uncle currently in the Oval Office.
