When Barack Obama entered the White House in early 2009 and got to work addressing an avalanche of pressing crises, he often used a metaphor when asking for Americans’ patience. “The ship of state is an ocean liner, it’s not a speed boat,” the president said.
The underlying point was obvious: The Democrat wanted the public to understand that the United States had drifted far off course — he took office at the height of the Great Recession and during two deadly, unpopular wars — and that turning it around would take time. Smaller countries might be more nimble, but the U.S. and its economy are massive entities. Rapid U-turns were not, and are not, a realistic option.
Seventeen years later, JD Vance embraced an almost identical metaphor, except the vice president didn’t refer to just any generic ocean liner — the Ohio Republican had a specific ocean liner in mind.
“The Democrats talk a lot about the affordability crisis in the United States of America. And yes, there is an affordability crisis — one created by Joe Biden’s policies,” Vance said. “You don’t turn the Titanic around overnight.”
For now, let’s not dwell on the obvious fact that blaming Biden for the Trump administration’s failures to address cost-of-living concerns is difficult to take seriously. Instead, let’s consider two related points.
First, as Vance sees it, the United States as led by Donald Trump is the Titanic — a ship once thought to be unsinkable, before those at its helm made catastrophic misjudgments. (I don’t want to spoil the story for the vice president, but things didn’t work out well for the boat after an unfortunate confrontation with an iceberg.)
Second, even if one were inclined to ignore Vance’s tragic metaphor, there is no reason to turn the ship of state around, overnight or otherwise.
In the fall of 2024, a Wall Street Journal analysis described the state of the Biden-era economy as “remarkable,” which coincided with a Bloomberg analysis that said, “The nation is experiencing a dream combination of strong growth and low inflation.”
There is more where that came from. A month before Election Day 2024, The New York Times reported that the U.S. job market was “as healthy as it has ever been” — meaning in the history of the country — and described economic growth as “robust.” A few days later, The Washington Post’s Heather Long explained in a column, “We are living through one of the best economic years of many people’s lifetimes.” The same day, Politico described the status quo as “a dream economy.”
The Economist, a leading British publication, also described the U.S. economy as “the envy of the world,” adding that the American economy “has left other rich countries in the dust.”
Vance and Trump have made extraordinary strides in turning things around. Unfortunately for the country, like the Titanic, the economy is now pointing in the wrong direction: down.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
