As the Biden administration draws to a close, the assessments have begun to roll in. There have been looks back to the pandemic, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the response to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the aborted second presidential campaign.
Rarely, however, does anyone mention style. It is not the first thing that comes to mind with this presidency, but it played a bigger role in building its narrative than may have been obvious at the time.
When President Biden took office in 2021, he did so promising a “return to norms” after the chaos of the Trump administration, a return to old-school diplomacy, civility, bipartisanship. How that might look was, in some ways, reflected in the … well, normal dress of the first family.
It began with the inauguration, held during Covid. There may not have been an inaugural ball or even a giant crowd because of pandemic protocols, but that did not mean the administration couldn’t use the pageantry to its own ends. The first and second families all wore American designers (not to mention masks that matched their suits).