| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe President Joe Biden has famously made being boring an electoral and communications strategy. It's both a contrast to his unpopular predecessor and a way of squaring an aggressive liberal policy agenda with a promise to revive normal politics and normal behavior. But is being boring more than that for Biden? Is it also a governing strategy? That's one way to interpret the events of the last week. Dan Drezner, the international politics scholar, has a very nice column in the Washington Post about Biden and the conflict between Israel and Hamas, in which he argues that Biden downplayed the situation to preserve his goal of preventing the Middle East from moving up his priority list. Drezner also praises Biden's sense of how to ratchet up pressure by waiting for events to make it work. I think that all seems correct. It's also the case that Biden avoided doing anything dramatic, in public and apparently in private as well. I'm not saying that he achieved a cease-fire by putting everyone to sleep. But he seemed careful to keep his own role, well, on the subdued side. That also seems to have been the administration's reflex over the weekend when the government of Belarus forced down a passenger flight to arrest an opposition journalist who was onboard. Europeans responded first, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken put out a statement well before Biden did. It's not that the U.S. reaction was hesitant or weak; it's just that Biden didn't insert himself into the headline. That seemed to be something more than part of a communications strategy; Biden appears to be avoiding the spotlight as a way to get things done. It's not that Biden is keeping himself invisible. For example, he's actively negotiating with Senate Republicans on his infrastructure package. But mostly in a fairly low-key way. To some extent, this may just be a case of returning to normal. Normal presidents, after all, don't tweet out impulsive reactions to world events. They respond by going through a policy process, making sure the administration presents a unified message and crafting decisions with input from experts and relevant policy networks. It's possible, however, that it's something more: A deliberate style that uses "boring" to give Biden extra room to maneuver, and perhaps even increased leverage. This seems at least somewhat related to the old saw that anyone can get things done in Washington by being willing to give others the credit, but it also may be something new. It's worth keeping an eye on this new administration to see if there's more to boredom than meets the eye. 1. Kiela Crabtree at the Monkey Cage on public opinion reactions to mass shootings. 2. Jeremy Stahl on the bogus "audit" in Arizona of 2020 election results. 3. Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip Levine on U.S. fertility rates. 4. Peter Nicholas on Senator Mitt Romney and the obstacles to Republican policy innovation. 5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Justin Fox on the possibility that the pandemic will be back in the fall. 6. And Imani Perry on Samaria Rice, whose son, Tamir, was killed by a Cleveland police officer in 2014. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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