How is Biden Tracking?
Traditionally in the US, whenever a new President takes charge, the media eagerly run a rule over the leader’s first 100 days to judge what kind of a president he (still no she as yet) will be. This tradition dates back to Franklin D. Roosevelt who took over in a similarly chaotic time in American politics with the Great Depression well underway.
The reason the tradition starts with Roosevelt is because FDR made such a big deal of all the laws he managed to get passed within the aforementioned time period. We haven’t bothered to limit ourselves to such a frivolous allegory here however as we believe it is unfair to any modern president due to the partisan-to-the-point-of-gridlock nature of American politics at present. Sadly, these days either defeated party will be sure to do their darnest to kill off any early proposed bill whether good or bad just to spite the victors and deny them any chance to make quick change.
The specter of Covid also makes the 100 days a pointless paradigm for measuring Joe Biden’s performance as he inherited such an unholy mess of a response from his predecessor which required his full and immediate attention – in a similar way to how President Obama had to cope with the spiraling fallout from the GFC back in 2009. At least Obama had universal agreement as to the problems he faced however, as the almost insurmountable problem Biden faces is the extraordinary baked-in opposition of the majority of the Republican party to any facts – no matter whether they are uttered by Democrats or even scientists.
Sure, any political system based on first-past-the-post elections will get a simplistic two-party structure of ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ depending on which side of the fence you sit, as anyone old enough to remember life here pre-MMP can attest. But American politics has descended so far they not only disagree on fundamentals like size of government, tax, women’s and LGBTQ rights and climate change action – they also can’t agree on the colour of the sky, as one side thinks it is blue while the other is adamant it is actually whatever hue ex-President Trump says it is.
In such ultra-partisan times, realistically it is almost impossible to govern by consensus at all let alone deal with multiple crises. Yet that is what President Biden has to at least attempt and, now that we’ve cut him a break and allowed him 200 days in office, it’s time to track his progress so far.
Expectation Management
We don’t need to wait for the academics in their ivory towers to do their sums on President Trump, unless you are a WWE-loving farm worker from Buttlick, Arkansas or a Bruce Springsteen-idolising auto mechanic from Crimsonneck, Ohio you know he was a bad president. And not just bad but mind-blowingly narcissistic, naïve, corrupt and delusional. Amazingly, he has even made Richard Nixon look like Tom Brady!
The majority of America – though not as much as we would like – realised this and turned out in their droves to vote him out last November. Realistically they could have been voting for Mickey Mouse or Kim Kardashian however, as they just wanted someone better than Trump in the job. But that is a really, really low bar – virtually the entire human race save for Hillary Clinton could get over that.
All the same, Joe Biden was hardly the Democrats’ first pick, though he’d been Vice President for Barack Obama for eight years, before his nomination he was regarded as too old, too gaffe-prone and even too white for the new-look, post-Clinton Democratic Party. Plus, he looked dead and buried after his abysmal fifth-place showing in the Iowa Democratic primary in February. Absolutely no one thought he would win the party nomination, except maybe for House majority whip James Clyburn who endorsed Biden in South Carolina which pretty much guaranteed Biden the Black vote from then on. Clyburn knew that realistically Biden was the only Democrat who could beat Trump, because – unlike all his opponents – Biden was so bland that even Captain Nasty couldn’t find a feature to sling mud at. He was the ‘meh’ candidate that everyone could hold their nose and vote for without the serious reservations of supporting ivory tower know-it-all Elizabeth Warren, crazy old curmudgeon Bernie Sanders or smug gay guy Pete Buttigieg.
So, even though ‘Sleepy Joe’ racked up the highest vote tally ever for a US president with over 81m – it was a 100% anti-Trump vote. Unlike Kennedy, Reagan or Obama before him, Biden did not inspire a single person to buy into his vision because he didn’t have one beyond pledging to be a nicer guy than his predecessor. Which made things tough once those 81m votes got him into the White House as he had no genuine mandate from the people to do anything other than kick Trump, his family and sleazy hangers-on out onto the pavement and return the Presidency to its former role of governing a nation instead of lining its inhabitants’ pockets. He did that on Day 1 of his Presidency, signing 17 bills that basically reversed the more ridiculous (disbanding NSA’s biodefence directorate, leaving WHO); corrupt (Keystone XL pipeline permit) and flat-out racist (Muslim ban, establishment of 1776 Commission) policies that Trump dreamed up. Plus, he began the convoluted dragnet process of weeding out the multitude of landmine-like stooges Trump placed in key governmental positions in his final few weeks.
So whilst on one hand, it seems like Biden can’t lose as he inherited a majority who were ‘drunk on relief’ that the bogeyman was gone, American presidents are always judged contextually. James Buchanan is always rated at or near the bottom of the list due to his failure to avoid the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln rated highly for his leadership during that war and Woodrow Wilson is inevitably linked with the Great War that dominated his presidency. How they coped with the situations they inherited is how they have always been judged and so Joe Biden has the enormous opportunity to be either a great leader or miserable disaster purely based on the levels of chaos America is currently in.
Foreign Policy.
Of course, the big news right now is Afghanistan and the truly appalling scenes coming out of that far distant country as the Americans try to pull out and the Taliban muscle in. You would think that world leaders would have learned to leave Afghanistan alone by now as all the great powers including the Americans, Soviet Union and Great Britain have had a crack and left with their tails between their legs. True, Joe Biden wasn’t responsible for this debacle which has its roots way back in Bill Clinton’s day, but he is totally wearing the splashback for his military’s unbelievable underestimation of their opposition. Did they honestly expect the Taliban to play by Marquess of Queensbury Rules?
Joe can point the finger as much as he likes, and maybe even justifiably so, but the history books will chalk this one up on his scorecard and definitely in the negative column. Worse, this debacle alongside Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds in Syria have done much to erode the US military leadership’s standing in the world. And at a time when they can ill afford to appear weak with cocky and immensely powerful enemies (one even with the largest navy in the world!) popping up and ready to flex. Expect an unrelated military overkill response against a weaker opponent laced with unnecessary furious anger. And soon.
Covid.
Of all the differences between how Trump and Biden operate(d) as President, this is probably the most stark. One pretended that Covid didn’t exist, or at least believed that inaction would make it just ‘disappear’ – while the other gets on with dealing with it, no matter how inconvenient it is to the personal agenda.
As you might expect, the virus itself hasn’t taken notice of whether it was a traditionally left or right leaning party in charge of the White House and spread virulently; with the U.S. now currently averaging more than 100,000 new cases a day. However, Biden has been willing to accept reality and deal with the problem he faces with over 230m vaccines having been administered at the time of writing – despite the well-documented, largely unjustified and politically-based resistance of some Republican lawmakers. Biden’s patience is finally starting to run out with some of these governors, telling them to at least ‘get out of the way’ if they refuse to help him fight the coronavirus. Incredibly, Biden is facing less resistance from that bastion of conservatism; the US military with the Pentagon ordering that vaccination is to be mandatory for all personnel.
Interestingly Covid has also proved useful – in a way – to Biden as he has sneakily used it as a justification for keeping on a Trump anti-immigration policy. Title 42 was dreamed up by the previous Administration to act as a lockdown-style block at the US borders to stop dirty migrants from infecting clean, wholesome Americans from Covid, rabies and left-wing attitudes. But it also appears to be useful to Biden as a temporary plug on immigration while his team figures out what to do about this complex problem. Not that it is stopping illegal immigration at all as yet another recent overloaded van crash with multiple foreign fatalities exposed the fact that meanwhile it is business as usual in the human smuggling trade.
Climate Change.
Another massive difference between the two leaders is their attitude toward the environment. Trump was clearly in the pocket of Big Business interests as evidenced by passing his sole bill of importance; the 2017 tax cuts, his eagerness to smooth passage for the fossil-fuel energy sector and via his abhorrence for renewable energy with his obviously well-researched claims such as; ‘wind turbines cause cancer’.
Biden on the other hand has plunged straight in to tackling climate change by pledging to decarbonise America’s economy by 2050. As part of that he wants half of all new car sales in America to be electric by 2030, a claim that carries weight as he made sure the executives of the three largest US auto companies were a part of that decision. Of course, whilst fossil-fuel vehicles are not the only cause of emissions, the President has correctly rationalised; ‘you can’t solve climate change without getting rid of them.’ His administration also plans to bring in more stringent pollution rules for both passenger vehicles and heavy-duty trucks.
But changing things like power generation and a reliance on internal combustion engine-driven vehicles quickly isn’t as easy as merely signing a bill and watching it unfold on Instagram. Massive investment in new infrastructure is required as electric vehicles require charging stations, and there are only around 43,000 across the entire US currently. Biden wants to build a network of 500,000 more within a decade to support the new electric fleet, which will require some serious investment…
Domestically.
One benefit of having a doddery, old-fashioned man like Joe Biden instead of some pretty, social media-savvy, tattooed ex-DJ as your leader is because of what and who he knows – and for how long. Like it or not, the business of governing is the business of compromise as not everyone thinks the same things you do are important and – so long as you are not in a one-party state – you need buy-in from your opposition to get stuff done.
And the stuff Joe Biden is trying to get done is radical, and not just Obama-radical but Roosevelt-radical. Moving the nation away from driving their Chevys to the levees while the good ol’ boys are drinking whisky and rye is enough to see the old America that most grew up knowing die. And a lot of people aren’t going to like the disappearance of their ‘goddamn heritage’ at all – and not just on the opponent’s side either.
Even purely on financial terms, the cost of Biden’s infrastructure bill has had the Congressional Budget Office projecting that it would add more than $250 billion to the deficit over the next decade. Then there’s the associated issues like where does the colossal increase in electricity requirements come from? Plus the unions’ concerns over the reduction in auto assembly jobs due to simpler vehicles, plus an increased reliance on the potentially-hostile overseas nations who manufacture crucial battery components. And so on and so on.
But because of Biden’s decades long ability to reach across the aisle and talk turkey with Republicans, he has got Senate approval for a $3.5 trillion budget that would fund climate initiatives and health care while raising taxes on the wealthy. Even Redneck Villain #1 and now Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell crossed the floor to vote for it – which does not happen very often! Moderates from both sides like Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and Democrats like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin helped get it done.
Yet the bill faces a hard time in the House, who from? Biden’s own party, that’s who. The radical left wing Squad led by Lib Villain #1 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (aka AOC), and backed up by her fellow permanent revolutionaries Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman. The Squad don’t seem happy with any compromise whatsoever and are the very same people who championed the impossibly naïve and near-suicidal ‘Defund the police’ battle cry last year which almost cost the Democrats the election. An exasperated House Representative Abigail Spanberger spoke for many when she blamed the Squad’s idiocy for many of the unexpected down-ticket losses the Democrats experienced during the election of a Democratic president.
Surely the best way to redress the very real race-based issues with police that led to George Floyd’s murder – and others – would be to reform the police or at least install Black police chiefs in high shooting incident areas. Biden has just done exactly such an act by nominating Damian Williams to be Manhattan’s U.S. attorney. If confirmed (at time of writing), he would be the first Black man to lead that office.
All the same, Biden will need to find a way to control the Squad and their like as he doesn’t have enough reliable votes in the House to pass any of his proposed legislature without them.
Supreme Court.
Speaking of which; rightly or wrongly, the Republicans have completely gamed the Democrats for control of the Supreme Court over the past five years. Back in 2016, it was a finely balanced court of four conservative/four liberal judges with Chief Justice John Roberts normally following a conservative line but occasionally jumping over to shore up key liberal decisions like upholding Obamacare and DACA. But with the retirement of Anthony Kennedy and deaths of Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the Republicans first blocked Obama’s candidate Merrick Garland pre-Trump’s election then pushed through the confirmation of three conservative judges; Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett during Trump’s Circus.
To the Trump justices’ credit, they have not demonstrated the slavering extreme conservatism most Republicans expected – nay, demanded! – with Kavanaugh and Barrett surprisingly joining with Roberts to form a semi-moderate centre-right bloc which currently holds an arguably ‘sensible’ balance of power. How long that cozy compromise lasts will depend largely on whether the abortion law Roe vs Wade comes up before the Court yet again. Keeping that contentious decree untouched when they have the numbers to dump it may be a bridge too far for even the moderate Roberts, let alone the far more aggressively conservative Kavanaugh and Barrett. This is because Roe vs Wade is the rock under the beach towel for Republicans the same way that guns and the Second Amendment are for Democrats. It will be virtually impossible for a religious right majority Supreme Court to keep its hands off.
As if a 3-3-3 (or 3-6) scoreline for Democrats in the Court wasn’t bad enough, Biden has yet another challenge. One of his liberal judges is getting very old and frail so the President’s challenge will be whether he ‘encourages’ the 83-year-old Stephen Breyer to retire from the Court before the Democrats potentially lose their faint advantage in the House and equilibrium in the Senate in next years’ Mid-Terms. If Breyer does step down, he would allow Biden and his party to have the power to replace him with another liberal whilst they still have the numbers in Congress. Despite pressure from the extreme left of his party, Biden has yet to pass any of that onto Breyer although logic – and recent experience – would tell him that the Republicans will be quite happy to take advantage should Breyer die in office.
Joe Biden really needs to pull a rabbit out of the hat on this one because if Roe vs Wade goes down in flames on his watch, then he will have a pretty crappy legacy for a Democratic president on his hands – heck, even ultra conservative Presidents like Reagan and the Bushes couldn’t get it torpedoed during their Administrations! It will also be an act that will overshadow any and every other achievement Biden makes; even curing cancer personally or turning water into wine! Non-religious zealot women will never forgive him for it.
The Pacific.
And finally, closer to home, President Joe has been keeping an eye on the Pacific too – although using his more consensus-based style by checking in with freshly welcomed-back allies Australia and New Zealand first. Dutifully, we reported back that China has been embedding itself in the Pacific for some time but really got their boots under the bed during Trump’s blind-eye Administration by loaning money to governments, building courthouses and being a shoulder to cry on for Pacific leaders. All done while the Islands’ traditional Western allies did – well nothing really, and thus allowing the Chinese to slide easily into the vacuum.
Excited by the prospect of an American president who actually gives a damn, Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama immediately invited President Biden to the recent Pacific Island Forum and whilst Joe didn’t jump on the Zoom call – the man has a lot on his plate – he did send a recorded message to the forum promising half a billion Covid string-free vaccines. It’s hard to imagine his immediate predecessor bothering to do the same although, to be fair, it is doubtful Mr Bainimarama would have wasted any time inviting Trump in the first place.
But it was just as well Joe didn’t bother actually checking in to the online meeting as unfortunately some of the leaders at the Forum seem more concerned about whose turn it is to sit in the Big Chair than about such petty issues as Covid, aid, climate change and illegal fishing. Priorities, people!
Uncle Joe knows the score however and almost immediately the US Coast Guard found some money to replace two old dungers in Guam with three 47-metre fast response cutters. Early steps perhaps but a real affirmation from the US along with allies France, Australia and New Zealand of Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna’s words that; ‘it is important that the region’s key partners are engaged and co-ordinated with regional efforts, in a way which builds capacity, to address these regional security challenges.’
A Good Start.
So, from what we’ve seen in the six months or so the Joe Biden has been president has been a surprising energy and an even more amazing ambition. Despite the absolute mess he inherited, Biden has not shirked the slightest responsibility although he has been quick to take advantage of Trump policies that suit his current need state ie; Title 42 and a non-revocation of withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan. If he is able to pass his infrastructure and climate change legislation, he will likely change America more than anybody has since at least World War II – which, admittedly, is a pretty big ‘if’. He doesn’t seem to care about the cost of anything and appears willing to spend trillions on bringing America up to speed on getting its people into jobs, building roads and bridges and even electrifying 276 million cars. It’s a pretty amazing start!
But a good start does not necessarily mean than Biden will be regarded as a great president, we will have to wait until someone else takes over before we can draw any final conclusions on that. For comparison, we need only look at George W Bush’s tenure as president. Despite what the comedians and left-leaning documentarians might have told you at the time, ‘W’ was a very popular president, certainly in his first term. But his botched response to Hurricane Katrina did him in however for his legacy and whatever goodwill currency he had built up over the response to 9/11 was gone.
Biden also has the looming specter of the 2022 mid-term elections hanging over him where it is extremely possible that the Democrats will lose control of both the House and the Senate – thus making legislature very hard to pass. He could go the Trump route and attempt to govern by Executive Order but it’s hard to see a political animal like Joe Biden relishing such a circumvention of due process. Still, it may prove to be the best way to get America heading in the right direction, even if it’s not so good for democracy.
Already it is easy to see Biden as being the instigator of a new America; one that is adapting to the demands of the environment rather than ignoring it. One that faces up to endemic racism rather than denying it and which is capable of weighing up the needs of the individual versus that of society.
Sadly, it is also easy to see that the damage Trump has done to the country is unlikely to be undone during Biden’s term – or even terms should he go on to run and win in 2024 – as the former’s legacy of hate and blame deflection has proved intoxicating to a massive swathe of Americans. Undoing that legacy will require a leader with far greater charisma and vision than Joe Biden. Maybe that person doesn’t exist – or maybe they are just around the corner, we’ll have to wait and see. But one thing is for certain; President Biden will have given them a far better grounding to work with than what he was delivered. Although they’ll probably have a few hefty debts to deal with too.