Biden’s wins on infrastructure, climate and now marijuana don’t sound like failure to me

For a failed presidency, Joe Biden’s first term sure seems to have a lot going for it.

Thursday’s announcement that Biden pardoned thousands of Americans with federal convictions of simple marijuana possession is a momentous example. The Justice Department will also stop charging anyone with simple possession of the drug beginning today.

Federal prosecutions for simple possession of pot are relatively rare. The White House estimates about 6,500 people will now be eligible to have their convictions erased. That will free up opportunities for housing, jobs and college loans denied them because of their past drug convictions.

But Biden’s move goes well beyond the small numbers. He based his decision on the irrefutable logic that treating pot the same as heroin and cocaine “makes no sense.” And, as he pointed out, that doesn’t even begin to address the well-proven fact that drug convictions are disproportionately handed down to people of color and the poor.

“Sending people to jail for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives — for conduct that is legal in many states,” Biden said on Twitter on Thursday.

“That’s before you address the clear racial disparities around prosecution and conviction. Today, we begin to right these wrongs.”

Biden is also asking federal officials to reevaluate whether marijuana belongs with other more dangerous drugs on the Schedule 1 of prohibited narcotics. That study is expected to take months, but will begin immediately.

The surprise move comes a month ahead of the midterm elections, and like his student loan forgiveness plan, is clearly aimed at boosting Democratic support. And like that decision, he showed a willingness to move further to the left that he has been comfortable with in the past — but, and this is critical — only so far.

He’s reiterating that he remains a moderate at heart. Progressives have pushed for years for much larger loan forgiveness, but Biden resisted. The left has also demanded for years a full decriminalization of marijuana — a step that would require action from Congress, and one Biden remains unwilling to take.

That strikes me as the heart of his success so far as president. At every step, he’s had to resist mighty winds calling for more extreme action, sometimes from the left or, as in the case of Ukraine, from the right. He almost always lands somewhere in the middle, if slightly left of center.

Even when he has proposed deeply progressive legislation, it’s become clear in hindsight that he did so to gain bargaining room with an evenly divided Senate.

No to Green New Deal, yes to clean energy

The left wanted the Green New Deal. He rejected it out of hand. But then he asked Congress for a much larger investment in green energy than what he finally got. What he did get was nevertheless the largest investment in climate readiness in our history.

The infrastructure bill was not as grand as progressives had urged, but it eventually passed and billions of dollars of badly needed projects (and jobs) are underway all over America.

On Ukraine, he’s faced a hell of a dilemma: Push too hard and risk the war spreading to other nations, and possibly even involving nuclear weapons. Don’t push hard enough and risk the collapse of Ukraine and the tacit acceptance of illegal imperialist overreach by Russia.

Many Republicans called on him to impose no-fly zones, provide Ukraine with fighter jets and more — all steps that he feared could escalate the conflict. On the other hand, he imposed the most severe set of financial sanctions in modern history, supported by a vast network of allies, from Turkey to Japan to Europe and beyond. When he did so, he warned Americans that exacting a price from Russia for its aggression would carry its own price.

He was right. The sanctions against Russia have wrecked the world energy market — just as inflation was rising. The same critics who urged him to widen our involvement in defense of Ukraine now criticize him for expensive gas.

Still, brave Ukraine now has Russia on the run — an outcome that wouldn’t have happened without Biden’s holding firm. It’s impossible to predict what will happen in Ukraine, but it is in better shape — and Putin in worse shape — than nearly anyone predicted six months ago. Biden deserves a share of the credit for that being the case.

Biden’s first two years haven’t been without failure. His inability to get voting rights bills signed into law is one major disappointment. His failure just this week to prevent Saudi Arabia and OPEC from slashing oil production in order to prop up already high oil prices is another. The large number of migrants arriving at our southern border is calling out for federal solutions that haven’t yet materialized.

But for a president whom even Democrats were beginning to see as a one-term president, and whose presidency Republicans were gleefully describing as failed, the old man in the White House has proven quite capable of notching surprising victories. And good sense.

Now, isn’t that a welcome change?

Michael A. .Lindenberger is a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer and vice president and editorial page editor at The Kansas City Star. Reach him at mlindenberger@kcstar.com