Joe Biden starts to swing at Elon Musk

Lessons from Liz
Ever wish your politics were a little more British? As Liz Truss heads to the exits after just six weeks in power, making her the shortest serving prime minister in the country’s history, that may seem a strange question. Westminster shenanigans feel more ignominious than enviable at the moment.

Not to my colleague Matt Purple. Observing the Downing Street meltdown from Washington, he wonders what it must feel like to hold incompetent leaders accountable. He writes:
If British politics has lately been ugly, grant it this much: at least they don’t have to stand for…

Lessons from Liz

Ever wish your politics were a little more British? As Liz Truss heads to the exits after just six weeks in power, making her the shortest serving prime minister in the country’s history, that may seem a strange question. Westminster shenanigans feel more ignominious than enviable at the moment.

Not to my colleague Matt Purple. Observing the Downing Street meltdown from Washington, he wonders what it must feel like to hold incompetent leaders accountable. He writes:

If British politics has lately been ugly, grant it this much: at least they don’t have to stand for bad leaders. Truss was never a saint or a sun god; she was merely the current leader of the Conservative Party. Ho hum. No ‘Hail to the Chief’ required: political power in the UK is far more desacralized than it is here.

I wonder if Matt isn’t being a little too down on Britain’s wayward cousin. After all, it looks increasingly likely that Joe Biden, like his outgoing British counterpart, is set to pay a high price for a fiscal mistake. Truss bet big on unfunded tax cuts, spooking the markets and then, in turn, the country and her own MPs. The budget with which she launched her premiership will be the defining mistake of her brief stint in power. Similarly, Biden cannot escape his early push to spend big and the related waving away of worries about inflation being anything other than transitory. Economically, Biden’s early mistakes worsened the inflation problem. Politically, they meant he owned it.

Truss’s missteps were similar in nature and consequence: a blasé dismissal of reservations about her plans that were soon vindicated in terms of both the merits of the policies and their political consequences.

Of course, midterm wipeout may not be quite as brutal as parliamentary-democracy defenestration, but it amounts to a similar verdict from the voters. And the polls suggest that Biden’s worst-case scenario — loss of both the House and the Senate — is growing more likely.

Different rules apply in America and Britain — the pound is not the dollar — and so there are limits to the lessons that Washington can learn from the crisis that engulfed London with such speed. But even so, Britain’s turmoil is a chastening illustration of the politics of a new era: one of inflation and high interest rates. Problems exposed in Britain’s pensions funds are a reminder of the unknowns that can trigger serious financial problems and the speed with which Truss came unstuck was a demonstration of the speed with which market trouble can spiral out of control.

Many factors that contributed to Truss’s fall were unique to Britain: an enervated Conservative Party in bad need of an electoral wake-up call and the vicissitudes of post-Brexit politics, to name two. But Britain’s instability is part of a global story too: of politicians slow to catch on to new realities, both geopolitical and economic, that make for hard times. And Truss’s fall is ultimately a lesson in what happens when leaders fail to recognize that.

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Musk vs Biden

Twitter shares fell 5.1 percent as the market opened this morning. The reason? News that the Biden administration is mulling national security reviews of Elon Musk’s ventures, including the acquisition of the social network. Musk has found himself at odds with the Biden White House, and convention wisdom, of late when it comes to the war in Ukraine. He has mused about various deals that could end the war and complained about a lack of state funding for the internet access Starlink is offering in Ukraine.

The news of a potential review sets up the possibility of a major showdown between the president and the world’s richest man over the acquisition of the preeminent forum for online debate. But it has also led some to wonder whether an ulterior motive lies behind Musk’s unorthodox Ukraine tweets. Is he trying to troll his way out of being forced to overpay for Twitter?

Which Fetterman is on the ballot?

Joe Biden was in Pittsburgh yesterday to boost Senate candidate John Fetterman. You know this was a big deal because the lumbering hoodie aficionado donned a suit for the occasion. Speaking at a campaign stop, Biden thanked Fetterman for running, but then said “And Gisele [Fetterman’s wife], you’re gonna be a great, great lady in the Senate.” No wonder Grace Curley has dubbed her and Jill Biden the “Real Housewives of the Campaign Trail”…