Biden’s political capital fails and might make passage less likely

BROOKE GLADSTONE After a handful of moderate Democrats shot down the minimum wage hike, some progressive journalists blamed Biden for not fighting tooth and nail – I mean, really, really trying – to get it in the bill. This belief that a president's legislative shortcomings are the product of a lack of will is what some media critics call the Green Lantern theory of the presidency. The Green Lantern Corps., for those unfamiliar with the DC Comics canon, are a class of superheroes who can conjure supernatural weapons using sheer willpower. As in that Ryan Reynolds movie from 2011.

[CLIP]

GREEN LANTERN Anything I see in my mind, I can create, I just have to focus.

CAROL Anything? [END CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE But according to Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College and the man who coined the term "the Green Lantern theory of the presidency," the idea overstates the power of the executive. He says that even when there's a will, there may not be a way.

BRENDAN NYHAN My understanding is the Green Lantern Corps have a ring whose powers are limited only by the wearer's willpower. Matt Iglesias is a blogger, he originally applied that idea to geopolitics. He was criticizing conservatives who said the failures of U.S. foreign policy in the post 9/11 era were attributable to a lack of will. And I saw that same idea as being applicable to domestic politics too, where the president's powers are actually quite limited.

BROOKE GLADSTONE And so all this brings us to the criticism currently directed at Joe Biden. Many progressives are upset by the failure to include the 15 dollar minimum wage, and argued that Biden could have done more to convince Democratic senators like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona who voted against it. David Sirota wrote in The Guardian, he's a former speechwriter for Bernie Sanders, the famous example from Lyndon B. Johnson's fight for Medicare as proof that a tough president can strong arm members of Congress into adopting his goals.

BRENDAN NYHAN Yeah, I think that LBJ arm twisting myth has been a major contributor to Green Lantern style discourse around the president. That the president can, through the kind of cajoling described in these famous accounts, bring numerous votes to his side in Congress. It's very difficult for the president to move votes in Congress. Ask Barack Obama for most of his time in office. Ask Donald Trump, ask any occupant of the White House. LBJ came into office with huge Democratic majorities. Joe Biden has a margin of zero votes in the Senate. Joe Manchin represents a state where almost 70 percent of people voted for Donald Trump. I'm not sure what arm twisting could cause him to vote against his political interests. The Democrats are an anchor around his neck politically. Withdrawing their support from him is not some kind of a threat. It probably helps him.

BROOKE GLADSTONE Getting back to LBJ, you say that he is one of two main illustrations that would seem to support the Green Lantern theory. The other president is Ronald Reagan.

BRENDAN NYHAN Rather than LBJ style arm twisting. Activists say that the president could marshal public opinion, if they only made the case publicly, they could win over the public to their side and therefore rally Congress to support their priorities. This was a recurring theme in the Obama years because he was a quite skilled orator. The evidence, however, suggests that presidential speechmaking is often ineffective. Ronald Reagan wrote in his own diaries when he was president that his case for aid to the Contras in Latin America failed to rally support, and reportedly he was even told by his own pollster that the public comments he was offering on behalf of the cause were actually making it harder for him by rallying opposition. And that's the dilemma that presidents face. David Frum, the conservative commentator, has argued that one of the most effective communication strategies of the early Biden administration has been how little he has talked. Precisely because it avoids making him the focal point of a conversation, given that presidents are so polarizing in our current era. So, again, the idea here is it's not a case of the president failing to deploy their public communication powers, it's that those public communication powers are highly overrated. Once the president gets the issues where they don't have the votes, sometimes they will try. Barack Obama campaigned quite extensively on behalf of gun control and renewed those efforts after high profile mass shootings. But it was fruitless. He would campaign on behalf of it because maybe it could help move the needle, but it never was enough to successfully enact the legislation the administration was proposing.