Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Facing challenges
Biden takes office amid national emergencies
Joe Biden wanted to be president for a long time.
He launched his first campaign for the office in 1988 and has thrown his hat in the ring several times since. He made it to the White House as President Barack Obama’s vice president, but the top political post eluded him.
That all changed Wednesday when Biden, 78, of Delaware was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States — a moment of political triumph that had been decades in the making.
But in all those decades of dreaming he likely never imagined he would be assuming the post at a time of seemingly unprecedented challenges.
It happened while a global pandemic continues to claim lives, upends our personal and professional worlds, ravages the world economy and exposes vast disparities within the American society.
It happened as the country continues to search for answers in the wake of the deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill that took place just two weeks before in an attempt to disrupt the transfer of power.
While capturing the presidency may be a dream come true for Biden, it’s clear the moment he took the oath of office he was confronted with a unique number of immense national emergencies.
The pandemic
There is trouble on every front. But the biggest challenge Biden will face is building support for his recently unveiled national strategy to respond to the COVID crisis.
His plan, some details of which he has already unveiled, focuses on expanding testing and vaccine distribution. It includes the creation of a Pandemic Testing Board that can help ramp up testing capacity and a proposal to get more money to states that have pleaded for funding for testing and vaccination efforts.
Local political experts said rolling out a new strategy to address the pandemic was the correct first move for a Biden administration that wants to win over a struggling nation.
“A lot of the other challenges are certainly being exacerbated by this health crisis so getting a handle on that as much as he can as early as he can is essential for everything that follows,” said Chris Borick, the director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown. “There’s no doubt that the pandemic must be his very first priority.”
Borick said building support among the people for his plan will follow when Biden can show that his proposals are making some headway on getting the pandemic under control. He said one of the biggest failures of his predecessor was the loss of confidence in how his proposals were carried out, especially during the health crisis.
“I think people are hoping for progress,” he said. “I think people long for some degree of clear focus and competence when it comes to the pandemic. It will go a long way toward bringing back confidence and stability to the office.”
Michael Armato, the director of the public policy and administration program at Albright College, said the best course of action for Biden will be to concentrate on the proposals that people can see and feel.
“In other words, he needs to fight for policy that has a real impact,” he said. “I think at this time most people need to see what the government is doing and see that they benefit from a particular course of action. I’d like to think most of us returning to our lives before the pandemic struck would be one hallmark of success.”
But he was quick to add that our lives before the pandemic were not perfect.
Armato said large portions of the nation felt ignored by the government. Others felt smothered by the government. So he believes the Biden administration is going to have to define its own goals so people can individually judge it on its success.
Restoring confidence
The pandemic is not the lone big challenge Biden is facing in his first days in the Oval Office. The newly minted president also has to deal with a fiercely divided country, a significant portion of which believes his presidency is based on fraud.
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Scranton Democrat, is a strong supporter of Biden and has considered him a close friend for many years. Casey said the new president is most definitely up to the task of healing the divides plaguing the country.
“I don’t think we could have elected someone who is more uniquely qualified and prepared to deal with this moment,” he said. “We have to have a long conversation as Americans about how facts that are irrefutable have somehow been discarded just because powerful people continue to lie about them.”
Casey said that is not a problem that we can push off to another day. He said we have to figure out the issue we have in this country with regard to facts and truth. And that is not something that can be remedied with legislation.
“We can’t have a democracy unless we have a basic understanding of what the truth is,” he said. “I don’t have a simple answer for that, but I think Joe is someone who will work at that every day to inspire more confidence so that we can come together. It will be very helpful to have a president who tells the truth and will tamp down those divisions.”
Borick pointed out that while Democrats will control both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government for the next two years, he believes Biden will try to work with Republicans where he can to help foster that fellowship.
“One of his best attributes is that because he spent most of his career in Congress he understands that there is only so much you can get on big ticket issues without consensus,” he said. “I think he’ll look for opportunities where he might be able to push for more sweeping reforms but, ultimately, his pragmatism will guide his approach.”
Borick said that approach may just be what the country needs as it begins to bridge the deep divisions that have taken hold.
“He’s not going to reverse the incredible partisanship that has become the standard in Washington, but I think he believes that by acting in good faith with those across the aisle he can slightly turn down the temperature,” he said. “And if he can do that, it would be kind of amazing.”
Different takes
While the pandemic and fiercely divided country are the two biggest, most immediate issues Biden will face, they are not the only things that he will need to focus on.
As the new president addresses those crises, he is also going to have to govern. He will establish new priorities and enact new policies.
What those should be depends on who you ask.
Kevin Boughter, chairman of the Berks County Democratic Party, said Biden will first need to get the people he nominated to oversee critical Cabinet positions confirmed so he can get the government back up and running the way it is supposed to.
Once he has the people he needs in place, Boughter said the president should move forward on addressing a number of important issues with bold proposals. Those issues include everything from combating climate change to fixing a broken immigration system to promoting a more equitable economic landscape.
“We need to start chipping away at all of it,” he said. “We got a lot to do and we’ve got to be serious about it. I think that Biden is serious about it, and my hope is that the other side is willing to work with him to make things happen.”
Clay Breece, chairman of the Berks County Republican Party, is not as confident that Biden will be able to work across the aisle. But he conceded there is room for compromise when it comes to proposals that concentrate on helping those who are struggling.
“Biden will only be successful if he can connect with the working class people who want to see policies that impact their daily lives,” he said. “They have families to care for, they have bills to pay, they have houses that need to be paid off, they have investments they want to protect for their retirement. Those are the things that really matter to them.”
Breece said President Donald Trump was so popular with his supporters because he embraced policies that focused on delivering for the working people so a continuation of those proposals must remain the primary mission for the new president.
And he urged Biden to serve as a firewall to keep at bay the “socialist proposals” touted by the most progressive factions of the Democratic Party.
Jane Palmer, the director of the independent organization Berks Stands Up, takes issue with that advice. She said those “socialist proposals” are incredibly popular with most Americans and believes Biden has a mandate to take bold and transformative action.
“The crises are enormous. The solutions have to be enormous,” she said. “We understand the longing to go back to what some folks might think of as normal, but normal left too many of us behind.”
Palmer said normal involved not acknowledging the danger of white supremacy. Normal meant millions living in poverty, millions without health insurance, housing or food security. Normal meant the rapid destruction of our planet in service to corporate profits.
There can be no going back to normal, she said.
“The vast majority of people support the things that we support,” she said. “And we played a huge role in flipping Pennsylvania back to blue. We won this election. We sacrificed nights, weekends and holidays. We voted in record numbers. Now, Biden and the Democrats must deliver an America for all of us.”
In the immediate future, Palmer said, Biden must move rapidly on the $1.9 trillion relief package he has proposed to ensure that funding is directed to those on the front lines, those who have lost their livelihoods and the state governments that have been bearing the brunt of the response, not large corporations.
While that must be the first priority, she said she wants to see a lot more action. That includes the expansion of public health insurance for all, the cancellation of student debt, an investment in a regenerative economy, a plan to rebuild our infrastructure, the expansion of voting reforms and a proposal to support climate resilience.