From a New York Times guest essay by Matthew Yglesias headlined “It’s Great to Have a President Who Knows When to Shut up”:

President Biden’s communications strategy, if there was a strategy at all, during the recent debt ceiling showdown baffled allies and infuriated Democratic Party stalwarts.

While Speaker Kevin McCarthy blitzed Fox News and funneled daily doses of spin through the Capitol Hill tipsheets, the White House was publicly saying and doing very little — so little that it felt like basically nothing. Backbench House Democrats, progressive Twitter and liberal advocacy groups exhorted Mr. Biden to insist on a straightforward debt-ceiling increase by the G.O.P. House, but braced themselves for the worst: A tired, timid, too-moderate, too-ineffectual president with his head stuck in the distant past was about to get fleeced by the rabid right.