50 THINGS THAT ARE BETTER ALREADY
President Joe Biden has not completed his first week in office, but already there is much to celebrate. Let’s count the ways:
1. You can ignore Twitter.
2. The White House briefing room is not an Orwellian nightmare of lies.
3. We are now confronting white domestic terrorism.
4. We are not paying for golf trips.
5. There are no presidential relatives in government.
6. The tenor of hearings is sober and serious.
7. Qualified and knowledgeable nominees have been selected for senior spots.
8. We have a first lady who engages with the public.
9. We have not heard a word from presidential children.
10. We are now tough on Russian human rights abuses.
11. We get normal readouts of sane conversations between the president and foreign leaders.
12. The White House philosophy is to underpromise and overdeliver, not the other way around.
13. Manners are in, bullying is out.
14. You feel calmer after hearing the president.
15. Fact-checkers are not overworked.
16. Quality entertainers want to perform for the White House.
17. We have seen the president’s tax records.
18. The president is able to articulate policy details, coherently even.
19. The worst the press can come up with is the president’s watch.
20. We have a White House staff that looks like America.
21. We have a national COVID-19 plan.
22. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony S. Fauci is liberated, sounds happy and even looks younger.
23. Fauci, not the president, briefs on the science of COVID-19 and efficacy of vaccines.
24. Masks and social distancing in the White House.
25. The White House has policy initiatives and proposals, not merely leaving it all to Congress.
26. The administration is committed to releasing information, not covering it up, on the slaughter of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
27. The Muslim ban is gone.
28. It is the Republicans not the Democrats who are in disarray.
29. The national security adviser has not been fired for lying to the FBI.
30. No Soviet-style fawning over the president by his subordinates.
31. The president takes daily, in-person intelligence briefings.
32. The president does not care about Air Force One colors.
33. We have a president familiar with the Constitution.
34. Real cable news outlets get high ratings, others not so much.
35. President Andrew Jackson is out of the Oval Office, Benjamin Franklin is in.
36. Voice of America is back in the hands of actual journalists.
37. We get memes about Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, not crowd size.
38. We are back in the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization.
39. Instead of running it like a business, the new administration will try running government competently.
40. We have a president who doesn’t think military service is for “suckers” and who doesn’t send his “love” to people assaulting law enforcement.
41. The secretary of treasury nominee has her own Hamilton lyrics.
42. Amanda Gorman is a household name.
43. More than two-thirds of Americans approve of the White House COVID-19 approach.
44. No more work-free “executive time” in the presidential living quarters.
45. We have a churchgoing president “who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices.”
46. We have first dogs.
47. The vice president’s spouse does not teach at a school that bars LGBTQ students.
48. The White House takes the Hatch Act seriously.
49. The administration wants as many people as possible to vote.
50. The president will talk more to our allies than to Russian President Vladimir Putin.