Biden’s century
Like the curate’s egg, US President Joe Biden’s maiden address to Congress was good in parts. His first 100 days in office, which he completed this week, had more to offer than his speech or the high symbolism of two women, who are next in line should anything befall him, standing masked on ether side of his podium. Considering the damage caused to the US by four toxic years of Donald Trump and four grave challenges — the pandemic, a flailing economy, racial injustice and climate change — Mr Biden was destined to be a transformational President who was prepared to act to make change possible.
In many of his actions he has performed like one, particularly in bringing in “big government”, at a time of crisis, with US $4 trillion plans encompassing an US $1.8 trillion American Family Plan guaranteeing income for families with children and a US $2.3 trillion for a super ambitious American Jobs Plan. Mr Biden’s moves to push on with an aggressive legislative agenda only signify that bipartisanship may be vastly overrated in American politics. Coming as they do in a deeply polarised US, they may add to the divisions though. His proposals, to be backed by the printing of notes, may cast more of a burden to a debt-laden economy but, as he explained, the trickle-down economics of the Reagan and Trump kind will not work, not in post-Covid scenarios.
Mr Biden may have riled opponents some more with his clarity on where China and Russia stand and how the US will treat the Indo-Pacific, besides his resolve to pull troops out of the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan. Torn to shreds is the “America First” approach of the peculiar Trump brand of politics as Biden’s USA states its ambition to be the world’s arsenal of vaccines in the fight against waves of the coronavirus. He may not have been generous enough to acknowledge the Trump government’s early work in the hunt for vaccines and advance payments against supplies but his push for vaccination has already seen the inoculation of 200 million Americans, heralding signs that a kind of “normal” is near. Not too many may complain except, of course, the Republicans.