Can badly torn U.S. return to normal?
How Biden can succeed in the wake of Trump chaos
Many Americans will exhale at 9 a.m Wednesday, relieved to have survived the Donald Trump presidency. Four years of chaos and lies and the presidential encouragement of America’s most malevolent elements will end when Joe Biden takes the oath of office.
But is America ready for what Biden promised: a return to normalcy?
“That’s the big question: Can we return to normal after the Trump presidency?” said Elaine Kamarck, author of “Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again.”
“Everybody wants a return to some kind of normalcy, but given all the stuff that Trump got away with, people are wondering if that’s possible,” said Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
That’s the twisted state of the America that Biden inherits — one where there is actually a question about whether people know what normal looks like.
The good news for Biden is that after Trump, the bar to clear normal has dropped to its lowest rung in a generation.
Trump’s approval rating bottomed out at 34% after he encouraged a mob of his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol, according to a new Gallup Poll. That’s not much better than Richard Nixon’s 24% approval after he resigned the presidency in 1974 and equal to the final Gallup grades of Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush — placing those four on the bizarro Mount Rushmore.
Looking back on the Trump administration, Biden has it easy in some ways. All he has to do to appear normal is:
⏩ Not incite a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol by whipping them up with lies about a stolen election.
⏩ Not be impeached. Twice.
⏩ Not say “there are good people on both sides” of a protest when one side consists of white supremacists chanting “the Jews will not replace us” and carrying Nazi symbols.
⏩ Not separate immigrant children from their families at the border and then lose track of 545 of the kids’ families.
That’s just a partial list of nobrainer moves not to make. But given our tortured times, achieving normal won’t be easy. Here’s where Biden must start:
Master one huge task: Biden will enter office just as the COVID19 death toll crests 400,000 people, representing nearly 1 in 830 Americans alive when the pandemic arrived a year ago.
“Biden has just one job,” Kamarck said. “End this pandemic.”
That’s a major challenge given the poortononexistent coordination to date between the federal, state and local governments, which has extended to the vaccine rollout. On Tuesday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the city could exhaust its supply of vaccine by Thursday.
If Biden improves the federal response and the country reaches his goal of vaccinating 100 million additional Americans in 100 days, the new president “can show that government works,” Kamarck said. “Then, all sorts of things flow from that.”
“If he does it right, then the economy will improve — and that will make a difference to everyone,” said Michael Genovese, a professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University and author of “How Trump Governs.”
Find GOP friends: Biden plans to undo much of Trump’s legacy by issuing dozens of executive orders in the coming days, many of which will reverse the outgoing president’s executive orders. Biden is expected to direct the U.S. to rejoin the Paris climate accords and repeal the ban on travel from Muslimmajority countries, among other orders.
“The only thing he can’t undo are the Trump tax cuts and the judges that Trump appointed,” Kamarck said.
But passing major legislation will require Republican help when Democrats hold a slim majority in the House and the narrowest of advantages in the Senate.
So far that doesn’t look likely. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky ignored precedent and didn’t call the Senate back into session until Tuesday, robbing Biden of a chance of confirming his Cabinet nominees before he took office, unlike most new presidents. The Senate confirmed 12 of Ronald Reagan’s 14 Cabinet picks within his first two days in the White House and 13 of Bill Clinton’s choices within a day.
Kamarck remains optimistic, estimating there could be more than a dozen GOP senators who could be coaxed into siding with Biden at times. They appear capable of being swayed either because they bucked Trump to certify the election results or they were just reelected and won’t face the imminent threat of a Republican primary challenger.
Their first chance to support Biden will come soon, when he introduces an immigration plan that would provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented residents.
There are plenty of Republican immigration hardliners in the Senate. Nevertheless, Genovese thinks an immigration plan has a shot at passing with GOP help.
“Republicans want to get rid” of the immigration issue, because it hurts them with Latino voters, Genovese said. “So both parties want to get it off the table.”
Ignore Trump and Trumpists: Trump’s Senate impeachment trial will begin shortly after Biden takes office, enabling the former president to cast a shadow over the new administration’s crucial early days. Biden will be asked repeatedly to weigh in on the impeachment and every one of Trump’s postpresidential moves.
Genovese’s advice: “He should walk away. Saying less is more. Let others do it. He’s got to be above the fray.”
But Biden’s challenge with Republicans goes deeper than Trump. Three in four Republicans don’t think Biden won the election legitimately, according to a CNN poll.
Kamarck said it’s going to be “very hard to connect with those people. Trump has embedded a lot of misinformation in them.”
Know “normal” isn’t enough: Some Democrats— particularly people of color and lowincome Americans —were put off by Biden’s call for a return to normal.
“Normalcy sucked for a lot of people,” Kamarck said. “If you’re poor or you’ve faced discrimination in your life, everything hits you harder in life. That’s why this pandemic exacerbated inequality.”
Genovese added: “Biden has to call not just for a return to normalcy. But for a new normal.”