Incoming President Joe Biden faces a historic mess to clean up,
A series of mounting crises is poised to test Joe Biden like few modern presidents, say historians and political veterans, some of whom argue no incoming administration since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s has inherited a more vexing set of problems.
“I don’t know if we’re yet at an existential crisis, but we’re much closer to it than at any moment since 1933,” said Jeffrey Engel, the founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. “Biden faces tremendous challenges, but that’s also a tremendous opportunity to imprint his name in American history as very few other presidents can.”
The overlapping crises all came into sharp relief in the past week. The federal government reported Friday that the economy experienced the most job losses in December of any month since April amid a pandemic-induced slowdown.
COVID-19 vaccine distribution, meanwhile, continued to lag significantly behind expectation, just as the United States reported more than 4,000 deaths from the virus on Thursday, a single-day record for the country.
And a deadly breach of the Capitol on Wednesday left members of both parties deeply shaken — and raised the unprecedented possibility that President Donald Trump might be impeached for a second time in the final days of his presidency before Biden takes office on Jan. 20.
For a candidate who promised to unite Republicans and Democrats, the crises might prove to be a particularly steep challenge, even as Biden and officials inside his transition team continued to promise that he would pursue bipartisan solutions even after the recent political tumult.
Biden acknowledged the breadth and depth of the crises during a press conference Friday, calling distribution of the coronavirus vaccine the “greatest operational challenge we will ever face as a nation” while vowing to pull the economy out of turmoil by increasing the amount of government spending even in the face of mounting deficits.
“To the American people, I know these times are tough,” Biden said, speaking from his home state of Delaware. “But we’re going to get through this. Help is on the way.”
Biden did appear to concede some limitations to his calls for unity after Wednesday’s violence, which left five people dead, saying that he was glad Trump would not attend his inauguration, a major break from precedent.
For some Democrats, the treacherous circumstances Biden faces reminds them of their party’s last incoming president, as Barack Obama was immediately tasked with containing the fallout from the 2008 financial collapse.
But according to Engel, the presidential historian, Biden’s situation is more akin to Roosevelt’s in the 1930s, and to a certain degree, Abraham Lincoln’s during the Civil War.
“Among the cornucopia of problems presidents face, you can generally put them in three baskets: economic, political and security. Biden’s got trouble in all three,” Engel said.
“Obama had economic problems, but not nearly as great political and security challenges. Franklin Roosevelt had all three. Abraham Lincoln had all three.”
Michael Steele, who served as an aide to John Boehner, the House Republican leader during Obama’s tenure, said the challenges facing Biden in 2021 are “orders of magnitude greater,” given the health and political concerns that are compounding the current economic struggles.
Steele, now a GOP consultant, said Biden has an opportunity to deliver on his pledges of unity and address these issues in a bipartisan way, pointing to his past success negotiating with Republicans over a decadeslong career in the Senate and later as Obama’s vice president.
Even though Democrats will narrowly control both chambers of Congress, some big-ticket legislative items will require at least 60 votes in the Senate.
“The former vice president may be uniquely wellsuited to the moment if he realizes he doesn’t have a broad liberal mandate and tells his supporters he doesn’t have a broad liberal mandate,” Steele said. “If he’s going to confront these crises, he’s going to have to work in a bipartisan way.”
Biden officials maintain that a bipartisan compromise is not only possible, but necessary for this moment.
Jen Psaki, slated to be the new White House press secretary when Biden takes office, told reporters at a press briefing Friday that it’s the only way to get the pandemic and other challenges under control.
“The crises in the country mean that we don’t have a choice,” she said.