On July Fourth, Biden still believed in the impossible. He held a party on the White House lawn to celebrate “Independence Day and Independence from covid-19,” as his address that day was tragically mistitled. “Today, all across this nation, we can say with confidence: America is coming back together,” Biden declared. But, of course, it was not. It is no coincidence that Biden’s approval numbers began sinking over the summer as the Delta surge made clear the enormous costs to the whole society of what had morphed by then into what Biden and his Administration have taken to calling the “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
His Presidency has yet to recover. As of December, in fact, his positive rating stood at just forty-three per cent, according to Gallup. And not all of the political wounds can be pinned on recalcitrant Republicans and crazed anti-vaxxers. Biden and his Administration were at times slow to recognize unpleasant realities—whether the emergence of inflation, the likelihood of a swift Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, or the persistence of vaccine resistance—and equally slow to impose policies that might mitigate them. The oldest President ever elected, Biden at age seventy-nine is not the doddering caricature that Republicans have sought to make him. But he has not yet figured out how to make an effective case for himself and his Presidency. He is not the huckster that Trump was, nor is he the salesman. A year ago, Democrats would have been jubilant at the thought that they had managed to win back control of the Senate and pass bills amounting to trillions of dollars in urgently needed government programs. But the expectations for Biden’s Administration somehow became entirely out of line with what was possible—given the realities of covid and the U.S. Congress. As for the threat Trump poses, Biden continues to largely avoid even mentioning the former President by name, and the ongoing attack on democracy supported by him and his conspiracy-driven allies.
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