When the CDC sent a coronavirus advisory to many American households in March 2020, the front of the large postcard read “President Trump’s Coronavirus Guidelines For America” in capital letters. It didn’t take long for some to wonder whether the mailer was intended, at least in part, to promote Donald Trump in an election year.
Soon after, as the pandemic pushed the United States into a recession, the federal government prepared to send direct relief checks to millions of American households. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that the president told his team he had a specific priority: Trump wanted his name on the checks.
The article quoted a former senior Treasury Department official as saying that under normal circumstances, “an official – the payment center disbursement officer – would sign federal checks.” In the spring of 2020, the Republican incumbent president did not care about ‘normal circumstances’; he cared about self-indulgent election-year self-promotion.
Trump got his wish: The president had no legal authority to sign payouts from the U.S. Treasury Department, but his administration made sure that the checks approved by Congress would have the words “President Donald J. Trump” written on the front of the checks were printed.
More than four years later, his successor wished he had done the same. President Joe Biden told an audience at the Brookings Institution:
Within my first two months in office, I signed the American Rescue Plan – the most important economic recovery package in our history. I also learned something from Donald Trump: He signed checks for people…and I didn’t.
At that point, the Democratic incumbent pointed to his head and jokingly added, “Stupid.”
The problem is that Biden made an important point. Not about his intellect, of course, but about political strategies.
In March 2021, the White House touted $1,400 stimulus payments ready to reach millions of American families, but officials conceded that Biden’s name would not appear on the checks. The priority, the White House added, was to get the money out the door and into the hands of the people, not to promote the president.
In retrospect, was that a political misstep? Probably. I remember talking to people who worked in Democratic politics at the time, and they were all baffled as to why Biden and his team didn’t focus more on policymaking through a PR lens.
Apparently the outgoing president also has some regrets in this regard.
Trump’s obsession with self-promotion was cheap, annoying and at times bordering on vulgar. But as my MSNBC colleague Ryan Teague Beckwith recently summarized, the political tactics “didn’t hurt him” then either.
It’s tempting to dismiss cynicism and hope the public sees through the crass self-aggrandizement, but while Trump has few redeeming qualities, the man knows how to toot his own horn and capitalize accordingly.
In April 2018, Trump toured Mount Vernon and argued that George Washington was not sufficiently focused on branding when naming his Virginia estate. “Like [George Washington] “If he was smart, he would have put his name on it,” Trump said. “You have to put your name on things.”
Biden appears to have learned a related lesson, as has the rest of the political world.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
