Washington (AFP) – Biden had a tough to-do list on the day he took office as the oldest US president in history. One object however was non-existent: to bring back together a nation divided in two.
With the once-in-a-century COVID-19 pandemic, economic shutdowns, and a flurry of geopolitical challenges from China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, Biden faces a tall order by any measure.
But the man she defeated in 2020, Donald Trump, also left her with the kind of threat to democracy that had not been seen since at least the 1970s – perhaps since the Civil War.
Just two weeks before Biden was due to move into the Oval Office, hordes of Trump supporters stormed Congress to try and block the certification of the president-elect. Teams of Trump’s lawyers and friendly lawmakers were trying to overturn the results through procedural avenues.
On top of all that, Biden was 78, just out of retirement, and entering a role so stressful even in normal times that men three decades younger, such as Barack Obama, were visibly aged in the job.
The nation has rarely seemed more vulnerable.
US President Joe Biden walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 21, 2023 in Washington. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP)
But Biden’s survival of seemingly endless political setbacks and personal tragedies has surprised many skeptics.
He oversaw a successful exit from COVID and a strong economic recovery. He is reforming the US alliance against a more aggressive China and leading an unprecedented Western response to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
But on his pledge to “heal” the nation – Biden himself acknowledged that the work remains undone.
“I said I was running for three reasons,” he said in January.
“One was to restore the soul of America. And the other was to rebuild the country from the middle out and top to bottom,” he said.
“The third was to unite the country. The third one is going to be the hardest.
Big Win
To supporters, Biden turned out to be exactly what the country needed after Trump — an innate centrist, an old-fashioned champion of government service and a believer in the American role as leader of the West.
Mistakes have happened.
Early praise for the massive COVID vaccination program turned into criticism as new forms of the virus hit the country in 2021. And the administration’s reputation for competence took a hit in August 2021’s humiliating finale to the failed 20-year war in Afghanistan.
But in his second year in power, Biden has seen rising inflation finally subside, the economy grow strongly, and bold US policy in Ukraine win back foreign policy credit.
US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden arrive for an event in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 24, 2023 in Washington. (WIN MACNAME/GETTY IMAGES/AFP)
He has also worked on key expectations of Democratic voters on the environment. He returned the United States to the Paris climate accord and got Congress passing a historic spending bill to kickstart American manufacturing in electric vehicles and other climate-friendly technologies.
Another domestic victory was the bipartisan infrastructure package that set out to revive roads, bridges and railways that were rotting after decades of neglect.
His marathon secret trip to wartime Kiev in February, followed by a stirring defense of democracy in a speech in Poland, made history – and highlighted his argument that US global leadership is back.
Biden could point to electing Kamala Harris, the first woman and the first black and South Asian vice president, as well as nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman to the Supreme Court.
Opponents
Biden, a cynical left of his Democratic Party, has been ineffective in taking on increasingly hard-wing Republicans, while failing to meet his base’s demands for more moderate social change and failing to change the culture of free gun ownership. see as.
Among Republicans, Biden is disliked as much as Trump was by Democrats.
The relentless attacks on Fox News fueled an image of an insidious failure that allowed a flood of illegal immigration across the Mexican border, “woke up” liberals on gender identity and other hot-button social issues, and shifted the country from pro-Republican done. Business credo towards socialism.
A protester holds a “Let’s go Brandon” sign near US President Joe Biden’s motorcade in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on August 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Ivan Vucci)
Biden’s approval rating hasn’t exceeded 50 percent since 2021, reflecting the cynicism across society. Even most Democrats don’t believe he needs a second term.
“People,” Biden admitted in July 2022, when asked about the persistent pessimism, “are really, really down.”
Endurance
Biden effectively trained for a lifetime to become president, serving as a senator for 36 years, making two dismally failed bids for the White House, then spending eight years as Barack Obama’s deputy.
By the time he sought the 2020 Democratic nomination, the initial reaction from many, even in his own party, was to write him off as too old and too gaffe-prone.
Biden defeated a crowded field of Democratic candidates before meeting the statistically difficult task of defeating a sitting Republican president.
Those who knew him were not surprised.
US President Joe Biden speaks during an event in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 18, 2023 in Washington. (Drew Anger/Getty Images/AFP)
After all, he was just 29 and a surprise winner of a U.S. Senate seat in Delaware in 1972, when a month later his wife Neilia and their one-year-old daughter died in a car accident. Besides grieving his wife and child, he had to look after two other sons who were badly injured in the crash – Beau four, Hunter two.
But Biden has rebuilt his life and often talks about caring for his children as he shuttles endlessly between the Senate in Washington and his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
In 1975, Biden married his second wife, teacher Jill Jacobs, with whom he had a daughter, Ashley, and he credits the first lady with “putting us back together” today. She would be there for him again when another heartbreak broke in 2015 – the death from brain cancer of Beau, a rising political star himself at the age of 46.
‘Middle Class Joe’
After decades in Washington and countless hobnobbing sessions with millionaires, Biden has come a long way from his humble childhood roots in hard-scrabble Scranton, Pennsylvania.
But his affinity for blue-collar culture, and perhaps the tragedies of his family, helped make the otherwise archetypal professional politician more relatable.
Biden’s personal sales pitch, of course, has never changed: He is a Washington insider with unique experience in government and world affairs, yet “middle class Joe,” a leader who knows what the little guy does.
And while Biden may seem softer in an angry, extreme age than Trump or his younger rivals, that air of restraint may be his political superpower.