Why did all this good economic performance happen under the Biden administration?

Earlier, Paul discussed a NYT colloquy in which Ross Douthat played the “everything will probably be just fine” role. Buried at the end was this rather remarkable admission:

Douthat: America is a rich and stable country whose economy has outperformed all our competitors since the pandemic, whose start-ups and technology companies are the envy of the world, whose politics have become less racially polarized over the course of the Trump era, and whose vast scale and diversity and complex system of government are all likely to frustrate attempts by either political coalition to establish some sort of authoritarian settlement. I think we have a great many challenges at the moment, but I don’t think it’s just an American tic to say that our best days may well be still ahead of us.

Whoa, what was that again?

America is a rich and stable country whose economy has outperformed all our competitors since the pandemic

You don’t say!

Needless to say, this has not always been Douthat’s position. In September, he wrote a clearly pro-Trump column in the guise of an “undecided” voter, but was shrewd enough not to mention the real reason he’s obviously come around on the Donald (i.e. Dobbs) because this is not the message that Republican elites wanted to deliver to the marginal voter. So instead we got a case for Trump based around the idea that the Biden administration was a “policy failure”:

A historic surge in migration that happened without any kind of legislation or debate. A historic surge in inflation that was caused by the pandemic, but almost certainly goosed by Biden administration deficits. A mismanaged withdrawal from Afghanistan. A stalemated proxy war in Eastern Europe with a looming threat of escalation….

…Rather, the “ask” is to ratify a record of substantial policy failure and conspicuous ideological fanaticism.

Ideological fanaticism from Joe Biden, eh? Leaving that aside, it’s amazing how in 2 and a half months we have quietly moved from Biden being blamed for the inflation that happened everywhere after COVID with no mention of the performance of the economy otherwise, to a bland and accurate assertion that under Biden the American economy “outperformed all our competitors.” In other words, it’s not just among low-information voters that Republican perceptions of the economy have radically improved now that Daddy Trump can spuriously be given credit for it.

In that column, Douthat does the same thing on foreign policy — the Afghanistan debacle is a reason for vote for Trump, and ending the war in Afghanistan is a reason to vote for Trump because Biden didn’t press the “no chaos” button when withdrawing troops from country that after 20 years of nation-building did not have state in the Weberian sense at all. But it’s all a good illustration about how previously skeptical Republican elites have come around to Trump — rationalization and contradiction are just something you have to learn to live with.