“I’m tired of being quiet,” he said in a fiery speech last week.
the president of U.S he was referring specifically to his many “quiet talks” but unsuccessful behind the scenes with senators, in a failed effort to pass his landmark voting rights legislation.
Biden could thus sum up the exasperation of his first 12 months in the Oval Office.
And if 2021 saw a moderate Biden, it looks like 2022 will feature a louder, more belligerent version: a president who runs out of time, patience and allies to salvage what remains of his ambitions.
Biden took office on January 20, 2021, at age 78, becoming the oldest man to become president of the United States, with incredible challenges ahead.
The Covid-19 was out of control, Trump supporters had tried to nullify the presidential election just two weeks earlier, the economy was in a coma, and America’s allies around the world were reeling from the Republican shock.
Biden’s response to all of that, not to mention the exploding tensions over racism after a string of black Americans were killed during botched arrests, was to promise competition, old-fashioned decency and unity.
“My whole soul is in this. Bringing America together, bringing our people together,” Biden promised in his inaugural address. And he even seemed to have a chance to pull it off.
Democrats narrowly controlled both houses of Congress, Trump had been banned from Twitter, and Covid-19 vaccines were ready.
“Expectations were high that Biden, given his experience and his knowledge of Washington, would be able to get the trains running again on time.explains Lara Brown, director of the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management.
Now fast forward to the start of Biden’s sophomore year.
Haunted by variants Delta Y Omicron of the coronavirus, with an increasingly divided country and the likely loss of Congress to Republicans in the November midterm elections, Biden’s luck at 79 seems to have run out.
With a majority of just one in the Senate and just slightly more than that in the House of Representatives, his huge social spending plan, “Build Back Better,” is a carcass.
The same goes for the voting rights package that he says is necessary to save American democracy from Trump supporters.
A centrist at heart, Biden has failed to connect with the right or satisfy the left of his own party. As you are now discovering, downtown today is hard to find.
Average approval polls on fivethirtyeight.com are at a low 42%, down from 53%. A recent Quinnipiac survey, while atypical, recorded a disturbing 33% approval.
Abroad, the picture is similar.
While world allies like that the United States is not ruled by Trump, the country’s humiliating military departure from Afghanistan it torpedoed the aura of professionalism of the Biden administration.
Russia seems unconcerned as it masses troops on the Ukraine border. All of this is a bitter awakening from the days when the White House seethed with idealism and spoke of Biden as if he were Franklin Roosevelt, who led the United States through the Great Depression in the 1930s.
“Their optimism, combined with the public expectation that this would all work itself out, led them down a path of hubris,” Brown said.
There is still a scenario in which Biden emerges victorious: the pandemic dies down, the economy stabilizes, inflation recedes, and with the subsequent feel-good factor, he gets his party to reverse those legislative losses just in time for the midterm elections. .
Biden aides also point out that they got Congress to pass the American Rescue Plan of 1.9 trillion dollars, boosting an economy devastated by Covid and avoiding more widespread misery.
Surprisingly, the Democrats also garnered strong Republican support by passing a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package. All this with a minimal majority in Congress.
The most likely outcome for 2022, however, is continued Democratic infighting, followed by an eventual Republican victory in one or both houses of Congress in November.
At that moment, Biden can await aggressive House investigations, and even possibly impeachment, as Republicans seek to further undermine their opponents’ ability to govern.
In addition, it would be increasingly likely that Trump would present his candidacy for the 2024 presidential elections, which does not prevent the former president from continuing with his intention to subvert the 2020 elections.
All together is too much for Biden’s promise to restore “the soul of America.”
David Ignatius, a columnist for The Washington Post, advises the president to return to the “less shouting and more common sense” formula.
But Biden, between a rock and a hard place, warns that in 2022 he will go down a very different path.
“I didn’t look for this fight,” he said in another dramatic speech this month, this time to mark the anniversary of the Jan. 6 takeover of the Capitol by Trump supporters. “But I won’t be scared either,” Biden warned.
Source From: Ambito
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