Biden inheriting ‘huge mess’
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden predicted he would take office amid a “dark winter,” and the outlook is only getting bleaker.
No matter his first acts in the White House, the raging coronavirus pandemic could take another 100,000 American lives in his first month as president after crossing the grim marker of 400,000 deaths just minutes before Biden began his trip to Washington. He inherits a country weary from 10 months of lockdowns and business closures, divided by attacks on public health professionals and tantalized by the promise of widespread vaccination that will take months to have much ef fect.
Yet at noon Wednesday, the virus, and the nation’s response to it, will be Biden’s responsibility.
“We’re inheriting a huge mess here,” incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain bluntly told CNN Sunday. “The virus is going to get worse before it gets better,” he warned. “The virus is the virus. What we can do is act to control it.”
The effort to “control” the outbreak will likely be the defining test for the new administration: Biden has pledged to bring competence to a crisis that has made the U.S. exceptional for the wrong reasons — the most confirmed infections and deaths in the world.
The president-elect has lined up an expansive team of scientific and supply chain experts to boost testing and vaccinations and aims to shake up how the federal government manages the pandemic. Incoming press secretary Jen Psaki announced last week that Biden would be “phasing out” the Trump administration’s structure and centralizing all COVID-19 response at the White House under Biden counselor and coordinator Jeff Zients.
Biden’s team has only grown more concerned about the scale of the challenges ahead as they’ve prepared to take over. But the biggest challenge, in their view, was years in the making by the Trump administration: declining confidence in government and institutions.
The new administration hopes to rebuild trust in government by setting clear goals — be it for vaccinations in arms or reopening schools — and asking the public to be invested in achieving them.
A priority, Biden aides said, was demonstrating that the presidential “bully pulpit” can be used for more than bullying, but also to bring about national unity during a historic crisis.
Biden, aides say, is set to adopt a more top-down approach toward managing the crisis, expanding testing and administering vaccines. Where President Donald Trump emphasized a decentralized approach that left it up to individual states and cities to sort out complicated logistics, the new administration plans to directly engage with them to boost vaccinations and testing.
Similarly, Biden will use his inaugural address to tr y to bridge a patchwork of state and municipal guidelines and encourage all Americans to wear face coverings. Within hours of taking of fice, Biden will issue a mask mandate for those on federal proper ty and during interstate travel. Such action was eschewed by Trump, who at times spread misinformation about the virus and what was needed to stop it.
Biden also has set a goal of boosting the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations to administer 100 million shots in his first 100 days in of fice.
But perhaps even more than the mechanics of the response, Biden must rebuild trust in the nation’s health institutions and the credibility of the presidency to direct a national response to the crisis.
Trump has been a vocal skeptic of science, promoting unproven drugs like hydroxychloroquine and repeatedly asserting that the coronavirus would go away on its own.
Biden’s response to the pandemic must be “disciplined, realistic and methodical,” said Princeton histor y professor Julian Zelizer. “It’s a long game policy challenge. The politics must be grounded on science.”
“The chaos we have seen did not have to be,” he added. “Biden’s team understands this.”