WASHINGTON (AP) – When Joe Biden first walked into the Oval Office as president a month ago, his pens were ready. Already.
They carried a beautiful wooden box and carried the presidential seal and an imprint of his signature, a micro-mission accomplished before his swearing-in.
Four years ago, pens were just a minor drama in Donald Trump’s White House. The gold-plated signature pens he preferred had to be placed on rush order during his opening days. In time, he chose Sharpies over the government-issued pens.
About matters much more in-depth than a pen, Biden wants to show that the days of a seat of the pants are over.
He wants to show that the inflationary cycle of outrage can be contained. That things can be done by the book. That the new man can erase the legacy of the “ ex-husband, ” as Biden Trump has called.
In terms of 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 purified Trumpism, but he can in an opening period that totally different from the turmoil and problems from the first month of its predecessor.
The test for Biden is whether his stylistic changes will be matched by policies that show a marked improvement over Trump, and a month isn’t long enough to measure that. Furthermore, the length of Biden’s honeymoon is likely to be short in highly polarized Washington, with Republicans already saying he has given in to the Democratic Party’s left wing.
The first time the nation saw Biden in the Oval Office, hours after he was sworn in, he was sitting behind the Resolute Desk with a mask on his face.
Trump, of course, had avoided masks. Not only that, but he’d taken their use of a cultural war totem and a political bat, even when thousands of Americans died every day from a virus that well-worn masks can ward off.
Although Biden wore a mask during the campaign, seeing it on the new president’s face at the desk in the famous Oval Office set a different message. Biden wanted to make a sharp break with his predecessor, while his government faced the deep and persistent crises awaiting him.
The strategy had been in the works since before the election and began when Biden signed a flurry of executive orders at the bar. The intent was clear: to settle the core of Trump’s agenda on immigration, the pandemic and more, while also rejoining international alliances and trying to reassure historic allies that the United States can be relied upon again.
“The subtext below each of the images we see of the White House is the banner, ‘Under new management,’ said Robert Gibbs, who was President Barack Obama’s press secretary.
“Whether they show it openly or subtly, the message they are trying to convey, without involving the former president, is to make sure that everyone understands that things were going to be different now and that hopefully the results would be different. to be.”
In a white-out of executive actions in his early weeks, Biden reversed Trump’s course on the environment, placing the Obama health bill at the center of the pandemic response with an extended special enrollment period for the insurance program Trump vowed to kill.
The Iran nuclear deal that Biden’s abandoned predecessor is back on the diplomatic record. The US is back in the World Health Organization as well as the Paris climate agreement
But memberships and diplomatic outreach only go so far. The world wants to see how far Biden will actually go to meet the climate goals, whether he will send more aid to poorer countries in the pandemic, and whether his words of renewed solidarity with NATO might only last until the next swing of US politics. . .
Additionally, Biden faces the reality that China has moved in over the past four years to fill the void left by the United States in terms of trade, and allies have learned to rely less on the US during the more hostile Trump era. .
A month after Trump’s presidency, he had already lost his national security adviser and his choice of labor secretary to a scandal. The revolving door of burnt-out, disgraced or disaffected assistants creaked in motion.
The forces in the bureaucracy leaked information and opposed his policies. Revelations emerged of an FBI investigation into his campaign’s contacts with Russian intelligence officials, a precursor to a special investigation that would eventually lead to impeachment. Judges had already blocked his order to suspend the refugee program and ban visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Biden’s first month was relatively drama-free, with many of his cabinet choices approved and no apparent convulsions among his staff, other than the departure of a White House press officer. who made a profane threat against 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 spent a lifetime thinking about the stamp he wants to make as president and how to get it.
“No one who has seen Joe Biden as a candidate should be surprised by all of this,” said senior adviser Anita Dunn. “He didn’t have a learning curve about the problems, but also how to become president.”
There have been challenges nonetheless: the distraction from Trump’s post-presidential impeachment process, a more closely divided senate than his predecessor, and a candidate to head the Office of Management and Budget who has been in the business of deleting years of social media posts attacking Republicans and some of the Democratic left.
Much of what Biden intended to do was to mark a change from Trump in both style and substance.
The Democrat viewed his first month as a month to begin “healing the soul” of the nation, restoring the presidency and restoring the White House as a symbol of stability and credibility.
He has acted to lessen Washington’s partisan resentment and almost completely cut himself off from the Trump impeachment spectacle who spent most of the month consuming the capital and didn’t watch it live on TV. Still, his early efforts to work with Republicans on COVID-19 aid have stalled.
Gone are the tweets before the day Washington rattled with impromptu policy announcements and inflammatory rhetoric. Gone are the extensive, off-the-cuff, belligerent exchanges with the “enemy of the people” mainstream press.
Gone are rosy projections about the virus, with fateful promises that the nation will “come into the picture” about the pandemic.
Unlike its predecessor, Biden has educated the public about the pandemic and the resulting economic devastation, acknowledging that things would get worse before they got better.
“You had the former man say that, well, you know, we’re just going to open things up, and that’s all we have to do,” Biden told his first town hall meeting as president last week. “We said no, you have to deal with the disease before you get the economy going.”
A pattern emerged: The president and his team would deliberately set expectations low – particularly regarding vaccinations and reopening schools – and then try to achieve a political victory by beating that timetable.
How low? On Friday, in Michigan, he only envisioned the possibility that the country will return to normal by the end of the year. “God willing, this Christmas will be different from the last, but I can’t make that promise to you,” he said.
Biden’s team has installed a new discipline within the walls of the West Wing. The new president has only held one extensive question-and-answer session with reporters, and his talks in the Oval Office or before boarding Marine One were brief.
The White House posts follow with the ratings Biden delivered in his inaugural address: The US is being tested, and the answers won’t be easy.
The daily press briefings are back, this time with sign language. Pets are once again roaming the lawn of the White House. Fires crackle in the White House fireplace. Biden says he starts his day exercising, making coffee and eating yogurt or Raisin Bran.
At his town hall event in Wisconsin, Biden repeatedly stated that he did not want to talk about the former man.
“I’m tired of talking about Donald Trump, I don’t want to talk about him anymore,” he said. “For four years, all that has been in the news is Trump. For the next four years, I want to make sure all the news is the American people. “
That is quite a task. The ex-president maintains his grip on millions of supporters and his lock on much of the Republican Party, running or not.
But as far as Biden can, he is doing what Obama envisioned during the 2020 campaign if the Democrat were to win. Biden and running mate Kamala Harris would make it possible to ignore the circus in Washington again, Obama told a rally, and give Americans some predictability as to whether they like Biden’s course or not.
“You don’t have to think about them every day,” Obama said. “It just won’t be that exhausting. You will be able to live your life. “