Neither major party prioritized our future
By Herbert Rothschild
I said in an August column calling for Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race that he was, in my view, the best president in my adult lifetime. In response, one of my readers said that Biden’s support of Israel’s near-genocidal war on Gazans disqualified him. I acknowledged the criticism and asked him which president he would choose. He said none of them. That, I told him, was to refuse to face reality, which rarely answers to our expectations.
What I appreciate about Biden’s performance is his successful rejection of neoliberalism and its inherent economic injustice. The cruel irony is that presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who abandoned the Democratic Party’s historic commitment to the working class and allied it with the great concentrations of financial power that promote neoliberalism, were both reelected with working-class support. Still, I knew that Biden was my first choice only because the bar was so low.
Biden’s praiseworthy achievements came in areas where he had to surmount difficult hurdles in Congress. For years to come we’ll benefit from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Doubtless, Donald Trump will claim credit for as many of those benefits as he can, but in terms of historical assessment that’s neither here nor there.
Where Biden’s record is poor is in areas that the president either had no need for congressional approval — namely, foreign policy and issuing licenses for drilling — or in which Congress put up no resistance — namely, military spending. Unfortunately, these are the areas that will impact the fate of humankind.
A Trump-led Republican mantra has been “Drill, baby, drill.” Yes, we can drill more. Trump may open up for lease portions of Alaska and the continental shelf that are currently off-limits. However, it’s not as if the Biden administration curtailed domestic exploration and production of oil and gas. Far from it.
During Trump’s four years in office, oil production averaged 10.95 million barrels per day, with a high of 12.2 million in 2019. During Biden’s three full years in office, the daily average was 12 million barrels per day. Last year it hit 12.9, a record high. During the Trump years, natural gas production averaged 85.2 billion cubic feet per day, with a high of 92.2 bcf in 2019. During Biden’s three full years, the daily average was 98 bcf, with a high of 103 bcf last year, another record. We are now the world’s leading producer of oil and gas. There are meaningful commitments to develop clean energy in the Inflation Reduction Act, but their payoffs won’t come immediately. Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans alike are stoking the furnace overheating the Earth.
The other existential threat is nuclear war. Iran’s nuclear weapons program is a small part of that threat, but one that Biden refused to allay. We had already been a party to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that ended sanctions on Iran in exchange for its pledge — verified by on-site UN inspections — to end its development of nuclear weapons. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement and reimposed sanctions. Biden said he wanted to restore the JCPOA, but he injected new issues into the negotiations, such as Iran’s missile development and its support of groups aligned with the Palestinian cause. So, the talks went nowhere. And given nuclear-armed Israel’s recent attacks on Iran without U.S. objection, Iran now has good reason to acquire its own nukes.
The main threat of nuclear annihilation is nuclear war between nuclear superpowers. Under Biden, the U.S. has continued to propel a new arms race with Russia and China. Previously I wrote about our plans to completely replace our existing land-based ICBMs with a newer missile called the Sentinel. The modernization program extends much beyond that, including a new submarine-launched ICBM.
Here again are statistics comparing Biden’s record to Trump’s. During Trump’s four years, annual spending on the nuclear arsenal averaged $23.55 billion. During Biden’s first three years it averaged $28.9 billion, and he has asked Congress to appropriate $34.4 billion in fiscal 2025, a 25% increase since he took office. Russia and China have felt compelled to follow suit, although combined they spend less than we do on nuclear weapons.
Neither mitigating climate change nor averting nuclear catastrophe had any salience during the presidential campaign. Most of the issues that were on people’s minds are undeniably important — the cost of living and affordable housing, reproductive freedom and, above all, the continuation of the rule of law. Immigration is important, but in fact it’s important to keep it going, as I explained in a previous column titled, “Dare we say it? We need immigrants.”
Lastly, I’ll mention the Republicans’ relentless attack on transgender care, which was as inexcusable as the subject is unimportant to the future of our nation and world.
It’s particularly disheartening that neither climate change nor nuclear war were at the forefront of voters’ minds because it will take grassroots movements on both issues to force our national leaders to address decisively the catastrophes they bode. Those who have a vested interest in the fossil fuel economy and the war economy work tirelessly in D.C. to promote policies that perpetuate them. Powerful though they be, those forces can be defeated, as the movement to end the U.S.-Soviet arms race in the 1980s proved. To repeat that success, however, we must first do two things. One is to extend our political horizon beyond the next election cycle. The other is to realize that neither major political party is prioritizing our future.
Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected].
