Iâm Ezra Klein, and this is âThe Ezra Klein Show.â
I have covered Joe Biden for decades now. I covered him as a senator. I covered him as a vice president. I covered him as a participant in the Democratic Party, searching traumatized post-Trump debates about which direction to go. And I covered him twice as a presidential candidate. And I thought I had a pretty good handle on him. But I would not have predicted this presidency. I would not have predicted these bills. The American Rescue Plan was a $1.9 trillion bill that erred really heavily on the side of doing more. That is not, I would say, a hallmark of Joe Bidenâs career up until now. But maybe you could say, well, itâs a coronavirus emergency. That changed everything. Well, coronavirus doesnât explain the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan that just came out. This is not a coronavirus bill. It is not fixing problems caused by a pandemic. This is a searing critique of the pre-pandemic economy. Its provisions amount to an argument that the economy we had before the pandemic. It was a calamity for people and for the planet. The status quo ante was a disaster. And by implication, Democrats very much, including Joe Biden, who had a hand in building it, had been too slow to recognize its problems and much too timid in facing them. I like to say that every president is an emergent property. When you take that office, you become more than just yourself. You become a complex system. That includes your staff, your party, the opposition party, the moment the public chants geopolitical realities and so much more. But out of all that, the president and his staff, they have to fashion a philosophy, a coherent account of what theyâre doing and why theyâre doing it. And frankly, I have wanted a better account than the one weâve gotten, one that goes beyond coronavirus and beyond Joe Bidenâs much more moderate primary positioning to account for the ambition weâve seen. Brian Deese is director of Joe Bidenâs National Economic Council. He was a young economic policy prodigy in the Obama administration. He helped run the auto bailout. Then he turned to focus on climate, both in the Obama White House and then at BlackRock. And when Biden brought him back to run the National Economic Council, which is really powerful â itâs the nerve center of economic policymaking in the executive branch â that was a message. It was a message, if for one thing, in the Biden administration, all economics was going to be climate economics. So I asked Brian to come on the show to walk me through the American Jobs Plan and the way his thinking and the way Bidenâs thinking have changed since 2009. And why? Now, look, I always worry when I have a public official Iâm not going to say anything. Theyâll just dodge the questions and give me a lot of pablum. That didnât happen here. Brian was a lot more forthcoming than I feared. So I left, and I think you will, too, with a much better understanding of why the combination of forces we refer to as Joe Biden is taking the shape we now see. As always, my email is ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Here is Brian Deese. [MUSIC PLAYING]