Otherwise, the president still hasn’t successfully made the public case for anything. Indeed, he has almost zero capacity for persuasion — something that the White House clearly realizes and that’s reflected in his limited schedule and interactions with the press.

He’s allowed the left to lead him around by the nose on most things, mouthing its lines about the Georgia voting law supposedly being “Jim Crow on steroids” and slamming the Supreme Court while he was on a trip overseas.

His agenda has been almost entirely removed from the concerns of ordinary Americans. The title of the new spending bill is a nod to inflation, but what it really offers Americans groaning under double-digit price increases in key goods is — just what they need — more solar panels and wind turbines.

Of course, Biden’s first big achievement, the COVID bill, turned out to be most consequential for what it did to stoke an inflation that has disrupted the lives of much of the country and eroded its standard of living.