Erasing mark of ‘the former guy’
Low-key Biden employs masks, executive orders
WASHINGTON – When Joe Biden walked into the Oval Office for the first time as president a month ago, his pens were ready. Already.
Lining a fine wooden box, they bore the presidential seal and an imprint of his signature, a micro-mission accomplished in advance of his swearing-in.
Four years ago, pens were just one more little drama in Donald Trump’s White House. The gold-plated signature pens he favored had to be placed on rush order in his opening days. Over time, he came to favor Sharpies over the government-issued pens.
On matters far more profound than a pen, Biden is out to demonstrate that the days of a seat-of-the-pants presidency are over.
He wants to show that the inflationary cycle of outrage can be contained. That things can get done by the book. That the new guy can erase the legacy of the “former guy,” as Biden calls Trump.
On policy, symbolism and style, from the Earth’s climate to what’s not on his desk (Trump’s button to summon a Diet Coke), Biden has been purging Trumpism however he can in an opening stretch that is wholly unlike the turmoil and trouble of his predecessor’s first month.
The test for Biden is whether his stylistic changes will be matched by policies that deliver a marked improvement from Trump, and a month is not long enough to measure that. Further, the length of Biden’s honeymoon is likely to be brief in highly polarized Washington, with Republicans already saying he has caved to the left wing of the Democratic Party.
The first time the nation saw Biden in the Oval Office, hours after he was sworn in, he sat behind the Resolute Desk with a mask on his face.
Trump, of course, had eschewed masks. Not only that, but he had made their use a culture war totem and political cudgel even as thousands of Americans were dying each day from a virus that properly worn masks can ward off.
Though Biden wore a mask in the campaign, seeing it on the face of the new president at the desk in the famed Oval Office made for a different message. Biden wished to make a sharp break with his predecessor while his administration came to own the deep and intractable crises that awaited him.
The strategy had been in the works since before the election and began with Biden at the desk signing a flurry of executive orders. The intent was clear: to unwind the heart of Trump’s agenda on immigration, the pandemic and more while also rejoining international alliances and trying to assure historic allies that the United States could be relied upon once again.
“The subtext under every one of the images we are seeing from the White House is the banner: ‘Under new management,’ ” said Robert Gibbs, who was press secretary for President Barack Obama.
“Whether showing it overtly or subtly, the message they are trying to deliver, without engaging the former president, is to make sure everyone understands that things were going to operate differently now and that hopefully the results would be different, too.”
In a whiteout of executive actions in his first weeks, Biden reversed Trump’s course on the environment and placed the Obama health law at the center of the pandemic response with an extended special enrollment period for the insurance program Trump swore to kill.
The Iran nuclear deal that Biden’s predecessor abandoned is back on the diplomatic plate. The U.S. is back in the World Health Organization as well as the Paris climate accord.
But memberships and diplomatic outreach only go so far. The world wants to see how far Biden actually will go in making good on climate goals, whether he will steer more help to poorer countries in the pandemic and whether his words of renewed solidarity with NATO may only last until the next pendulum swing of U.S. politics.
In addition, Biden faces the reality that over the past four years China has moved in to fill the void left by the United States on trade, and allies learned to rely less on the U.S. during the more hostile Trump era.
One month into Trump’s presidency, he had already lost his national security adviser and his choice for labor secretary to scandal. A revolving door of burned-out, disgraced or disfavored aides was already creaking into motion.
Forces in the bureaucracy were leaking information and resisting his policies. Revelations were emerging about an FBI investigation into his campaign’s contacts with Russian intelligence officials, a precursor of a special inquiry that eventually morphed into impeachment. Judges had already blocked his order to suspend the refugee program and ban visitors from seven Muslimmajority countries.
Biden’s first month has been comparatively drama-free, with many of his Cabinet picks approved and no evident convulsions among his staff other than the departure of a White House press officer who made a profane threat to a journalist.
After 40 years in Washington, eight years as Obama’s vice president and two failed presidential campaigns before his successful one, Biden has had a lifetime to think about the mark he wants to make as president and how to get rolling on it.
“Nobody who observed Joe Biden as a candidate should be surprised by any of this,” said senior adviser Anita Dunn.
There have been challenges nonetheless: the distraction of Trump’s postpresidential impeachment trial, a more narrowly divided Senate than his predecessor faced and a nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget who’s been busy deleting years of social media posts assailing Republicans and some on the Democratic left.
Biden’s team has installed a new discipline within the walls of the West Wing. The new president has held only one extended question-and-answer session with reporters, and his exchanges in the Oval Office or before boarding Marine One have been brief.
At a town hall event in Wisconsin, Biden repeatedly talked about how he doesn’t want to talk about the former guy.
“I’m tired of talking about Donald Trump, don’t want to talk about him anymore,” he said. “For four years, all that’s been in the news is Trump. The next four years, I want to make sure all the news is the American people.”