When he signed those orders, the economy was “in a downward spiral,” recalled Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary during the first half of President Biden’s first term — and current MSNBC host. “There have been a number of impacts, including the slowdown in the supply chain and the fact that so many small and large businesses have closed across the country,” she said Assets in a recent interview.

Dealing with each of these dire impacts may necessarily mean more time working around the clock and less time crafting a compelling, outward-facing narrative. “When you're in government, your job is not just to communicate about the moment, but also to act,” Psaki said.

In other words, the Biden administration placed more emphasis on the action.

“Pull yourself out of the ditch”

But even if Biden's team hadn't been bogged down in trying to jump-start the battered economy after the COVID crisis, those messages probably wouldn't have gotten through anyway.

A hard lesson from the presidency: Even if you make working people better off every day; keep every one of your campaign promises; and then make new ones – and implement them – many people will still remain unimpressed.

That's because it's not to the commander in chief's credit that he made the situation slightly, gradually less dire, Psaki said.

“You're trying to convey that you're getting out of the ditch,” Psaki said. “I know this because I worked for Barack Obama when he was trying to communicate how to get the country out of recession.” (Psaki was Obama's deputy communications director in the early years of his first team.)

“While (Obama's) circumstances were different, it was a similar challenge, and you're trying to convey to people, 'I know we're losing 300,000 jobs every month, but a month ago we were losing 600,000 jobs every month.' So we are moving in the right direction. It's just that we're not quite there yet.'”

The president – and indeed the press secretary – gets no credit for making things less dire, and that can't be what your bar is right now, because your job is to “Making things less bad, not necessarily getting credit for it.”

Still, Psaki disputes the idea that “everyone feels like (the economy) is doing bad,” Psaki said. “In fact, the economic numbers, not just the data but also the approval, have improved for the Harris economic campaign and for the administration. Part of that’s because you can’t tell people how to feel.”

Inflation is getting better, she said, but it “takes a moment” for people to feel better: “That’s the challenge in communicating around economic data.”

But it's not all bad, says Psaki

Biden's term will be fondly remembered for some of its strongest moments, of which there are many, Psaki said.

“I think history will judge Biden's administration as one of the most progressive and impactful economic policies in decades, given what he has done on infrastructure and climate,” she said, adding that Biden's groundbreaking investment of $490 million Dollars in clean energy and… Climate action – part of the Inflation Reduction Act – is “the most ambitious climate law ever passed.”

Thanks to Biden's leadership, the US is in the top position today. Its economy is in much better shape than that of any other European country. Huge resources have been allocated to the transition to renewable energy. The labor market posted stronger-than-expected gains last month.

Any president would want this kind of coverage before an election; Democrats hope that Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden's successor, can run with it.

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