Biden exceeds expectations in his first hundred days
The hundred-day mark is an arbitrary and generally irrelevant timeframe on how a president will be remembered, but since the premiere of Franklin Roosevelt, he has cursed his successors. Its origin, a July 1934 speech in which, looking back, Roosevelt highlighted that his main measures against the Great Depression, such as the creation of social security, which forever changed the role of the state in the economy, were took at that time.
Nearing his first hundred days in the White House, analyzes of Joe Biden's management are torn between the comparison with Roosevelt and another equally transformative leader, Lyndon Johnson, the father of Great Society programs and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The quiet revolution of Biden, a 78-year-old politician who as a candidate never aroused great enthusiasm in the Democratic base, rather than meeting expectations, has exceeded them.
The popularity of the policies he has focused on - the vaccination campaign and the approval of a massive rescue plan - has raised his appreciation. 59% of Americans support his management, 5 points more than a month ago, according to the Pew Research Center. The percentage reaches 72% when asked about the management of the pandemic (a field in which Donald Trump did not exceed 50%) and 67% when citing the rescue plan.
Biden embraced the Roosevelt brand with unusual enthusiasm and as soon as he got to the White House he began to set goals. He promised that the United States would vaccinate 100 million people in the first 100 days of his presidency. More than one Republican congressman has had to eat his words: it was achieved after 50 days. Although the start of the immunization campaign was bumpy, the goal was clearly modest. Biden caught up with it and celebrated it as "a collective achievement."
That same day it was proposed to reach 200 million injections before April 29. The figure was exceeded a week earlier. 27% of the total population is fully vaccinated and 41% have received at least one dose. "When he said it, I thought he was being ambitious, but to my surprise he has succeeded," Dr. Arnold Monto, professor of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, told this newspaper.
"Biden has worked very well with the industry and has moved very well to increase the supply of vaccines by putting all the necessary elements in place to increase production," says Monto. "The Trump Administration did very well with the development of the vaccines," but not with its distribution plan, he clarifies. “It's easier to approve a vaccine than to inject it into millions of arms, and that's what Biden has done. He has worked very well with the states so that the distribution of vaccines is more predictable and the errors of the beginning have been corrected ”, celebrates Monto.
The dramatic circumstances in which Biden took office - a pandemic that had already caused 400,000 deaths in the US and a historic economic crisis - explain why the precedent of Roosevelt, whom the Democrat has, has been evoked from day one as a benchmark for its economic policy. The rescue plan signed by the president on March 11, endowed with 1.9 trillion dollars, is the largest reinforcement of the welfare state in decades.
41% of the population has at least one dose of the vaccine: 222 million injections go
His flagship measure, a tax credit that functions as a basic income for families, has an expiration date, but Democrats have set out to make it permanent. On the other hand, the White House has proposed raising corporate tax and has asked the G-20 to create a global minimum rate to corner tax havens. With that revenue, Biden intends to finance his proposal for a massive investment in infrastructure, valued at 2.1 trillion, in addition to his promise to cut greenhouse emissions by half by 2030, the most ambitious commitment ever made by a American government.
The White House will announce next week a new fiscal plan to raise taxes on the highest incomes, with a rate of 39.6% for those who earn more than a million dollars a year. It is his formula to pay for a new social protection plan that includes, for example, making preschool education universal and free and making access to university cheaper.
The Johnson comparisons have to do with the racial justice goals of many of these initiatives. Biden, who throughout his nearly 50 years in politics has always been at the center of the party, whatever his center of gravity, is ruling more to the left than the progressive wing of the party expected, which has facilitated his unit (96% of Democrats approve of his administration, according to Gallup, a historical level).
But the country is much more divided, and the majorities of Democrats in Congress are much smaller than those of Johnson and Roosevelt, crushing. There are limits to what Biden will be able to carry out in the Senate, hence the caution of some historians. "I find it hard to believe that [his policies] on him are going to be as transformative as those of the new deal," Stanford historian David M. Kennedy told NPR public radio. Inequality and climate are two areas where Biden should produce lasting change, he points out, to enter the pantheon of great presidents.
The first 100 days of a president reveal his priorities and his government strategy. And what has been seen with Biden is that his rhetoric on national unity is not about negotiating and waiting for the Republicans to give in (as vice president, he saw what that led to Barack Obama) but about betting on initiatives that enjoy great popular endorsement. His calculation: if, as happened with the bailout, the Conservatives do not collaborate, he may be laying the foundations for a better result of the Democrats in the legislative elections of 2022.
For historian Jonathan Alter, author of a book on Roosevelt's first 100 days, Biden "is the first president since Lyndon Johnson who can rightly be called the heir to FDR," but it remains to be seen whether he will squander his legacy or strengthen it. His challenge is to "restore the faith" of Americans in his government's ability to "deliver quick and tangible results," Alter argues from a podium in The New York Times.
But, as the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said, in the end it is events ("events, dear boy, events") that determine the direction of a government and the situation on the border with Mexico, which was not among its priorities. , has put Biden on the defensive from day one. Here, 55% of Americans disapprove of his management. This crisis - a term he is reluctant to use - has led him to renege on his promise to host 62,500 refugees and maintain Trump's cap instead.
Biden will celebrate his first 100 days in Georgia, the key state for his good debut
Although his impulse to reopen public schools has borne fruit, it is not clear that “the majority”, as proposed, have returned to face-to-face classes. But for the first time since the pandemic began, most Americans believe that things are looking for the better. The remarkable self-discipline with which Biden has behaved, known for his tendency to verbal slips, has allowed him to avoid major gaffes and fulfill another promise: to break with the media hyperactivity of the Trump era.
The president will celebrate the achievements of his first 100 days in the White House on Thursday in Georgia, the southern state where he won by 12,000 votes and where Democrats won the two seats that gave him the keys to governance in January. Without those two senators, his premiere would have been more complicated. However, history indicates that the most difficult days are those that come later.
