Even on Biden’s Big Day, He’s Still in Trump’s Long Shadow

Moments before President Biden signed a legacy-defining package of initiatives into law on Tuesday, one of his congressional allies lamented that the president’s accomplishments are “often away from public view” while another contrasted him with a former president who “relished creating chaos.”

No one mentioned Donald J. Trump’s name during the ceremony in the State Dining Room of the White House, but his presence was felt nonetheless as Mr. Biden enacted major climate, health care and corporate tax policies. One major reason Mr. Biden’s achievements often seem eclipsed in public view is because Mr. Trump is still creating chaos from his post-presidential exile.

No other sitting president has ever lived with the shadow of his defeated predecessor in quite the way that Mr. Biden has over the last year and a half. Regardless of what the current president does, he often finds himself struggling to break through the all-consuming circus that keeps Mr. Trump in the public eye. Even the bully pulpit of the White House has proved no match for the Trump reality show.

But it has become a frustrating and inescapable fact of life in the White House that Mr. Biden often has a hard time matching the man he beat when it comes to driving the national conversation. Until recently, Mr. Biden had enough trouble on his own communicating his agenda and successes, and now he finds himself in a frenzied news cycle dominated by multiple investigations in multiple jurisdictions involving Mr. Trump and his allies.

“Biden can’t reinvent himself in a way that out-Trumps Trump. It’s just not in his nature and would backfire,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican political consultant. “The best opportunity he has to offer the starkest contrast with Trump is to focus relentlessly on the issues giving the widest range of voters the most acute anxiety: inflation, housing, jobs and financial security. These are all issues where, if Biden can reset the trend lines, he can regain political capital.”

That is the strategy Mr. Biden’s aides hope to employ, making the argument that the domestic policy package he signed on Tuesday, along with falling gas prices and investments in the semiconductor industry and veterans’ health care, will appeal to voters more concerned about their own pocketbooks than Mr. Trump’s legal travails.

“The American people want President Biden to be focused on the things that impact their lives and what he’s going to do today is sign a bill that’s going to bring down their costs, the single biggest concern that they raise,” Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director, said in an interview before the signing ceremony.

Mr. Biden’s team recognized in advance that after carrying Tuesday’s ceremony, cable news outlets would quickly turn back to the latest developments involving Mr. Trump, so it opted to amplify the president’s message by enlisting cabinet officers to give interviews to local and regional media organizations. The White House posted online a video of the signing and drafted an opinion article in the president’s name that was published by Yahoo News.

Mr. Biden, who lately has been less in the…