He came prepared with a binder for discussion topics and an objective to stay in the message, although he sometimes wandered and became defensive.
The president broke new ground in his views on the Senate obstruction, said he hoped to run again in 2024 and downplayed the prospect of withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan in the coming deadline.
On a broader level, however, he provided the American people with their first broad view of how their president operates, their understanding of their own power and their visions for the future.
It took three questions, but Biden acknowledged on Thursday that he was ready to examine the Senate obstruction reform in an important way – including going beyond just reverting to the so-called “permanent obstruction”.
“We will have to go beyond what I am talking about,” he concluded after a lengthy response to his promises to the American people.
It was a step beyond what Biden was willing to take in the past and reflects the growing recognition that most items on the president’s priority list – gun control, immigration, climate change – have little chance of ensuring uniform approval. divide the Senate.
Biden said he was open to making major changes to the Senate rule on issues he called “elementary” to democracy.
“If necessary, if there is complete blockage and chaos as a result of the obstruction, we will have to go beyond what I am talking about,” he said.
Later, pressured by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins if he believed with former President Barack Obama that the obstruction is a remnant of Jim Crow, he said yes.
Biden had previously sought to strike a delicate balance when weighing in items like obstruction, fearful of alienating Republicans or pretending to break tradition.
But he seemed less concerned about these issues on Thursday, declaring himself working for the American people and not a vague idea of bipartisanship. Asked about Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who complained on Wednesday that he had only spoken to Biden once since taking office, he shrugged: “I hope he says exactly what he said.”
Pressed later on about his re-election plans, he openly wondered if the Republican Party would exist in three and a half years.
Behind him is a poll that shows many Republicans supporting his Covid-19 aid project, which no Republican in Congress has supported. Biden acknowledged that fact and said it was more important to him that Republicans in the country support his agenda than Republicans on Capitol Hill.
“I was unable to unite Congress, but I did manage to unite the country, based on survey data,” he said.
Temperament
People who worked alongside Biden often notice that he has a temper that sometimes gets worse when challenged. And that’s what happened on Thursday, asking a reporter “is this a serious issue?” when pressed about conditions at the border facilities and irritated by questions about his political future.
Biden ended up saying that he planned to run for re-election in 2024 – something he hadn’t said before – but acknowledged that events could intervene.
“I am a great respect for fate,” he said. “I hoped that was the case.”
The question of his political plans has put Biden’s age in sharp focus than it has been in his presidency so far, and at times during his press conference it was clear that Biden, 78, was counting on planned talking points.
At other times, he stopped, abruptly ending answers when he seemed to be wandering.
“Am I giving you a very long answer?” he asked several minutes in a response on immigration. “Maybe I should stop there.”
Still, Biden demonstrated a firm grip on the wide range of issues facing his presidency and seemed passionate about topics ranging from voting rights to infrastructure.
And he was on the defensive, especially when pressed on his government’s track record of containing the increase in migrants on the southern border.
His press conference was not marked by open hostility in the same way as that of President Donald Trump, and angering reporters is nothing new for Biden; in the election campaign, he attacked when asked about his family. His advisers do not believe that occasional flashes of anger are necessary for Biden.
Pandid-19 pandemic
Biden has focused tirelessly on fighting the coronavirus pandemic since taking office. One of the reasons a press conference has been delayed for so long, according to White House officials, was that Biden’s time was overwhelmingly concerned with the response.
However, the press conference came at a time when other issues were turning. Biden entered the event with the hope of turning his attention to his response to Covid-19, naming a new vaccination target – 200 million in his first 100 days. And later he sought to frame his entire presidency around the response to the pandemic.
“When I took office, I decided that it was a very basic and simple proposal. I was elected to solve the problems, ”he said.
It turned out that his desire to insert his response to the pandemic back into the conversation was justified; it did not appear in any of the questions asked by reporters.
Later, it became apparent that Biden’s next priority – an infrastructure package – must dominate his next legislative agenda. He was asked about gun control following two mass shootings that killed 18 people last week.
But he quickly acknowledged that this is not where he is going in Congress.
“Successful presidents, better than me, have been successful largely because they know how to time what they are doing,” he said, launching a long-term response ranging from improving drinking water to removing asbestos and making buildings more efficient. .
Foreign policy
For a president whose “first love” is foreign policy, according to advisers, the issue was not central at the beginning of his presidency.
This seems due to a change in the coming weeks, as he faces decisions about withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, punishing Russia for its role in a massive cyber attack, responding to North Korea’s provocations and developing a strategy to deal with a China. encouraged.
On Thursday, Biden provided some new insights into how he sees his role on the global stage. He suggested a renewed focus on improving relations with American allies after four tumultuous years under Trump.
But he also recognized certain areas where he finds himself facing the same problems as his predecessor, without a new approach.
He acknowledged that it would be “difficult” to meet the May 1 deadline for American troops to withdraw from Afghanistan, but said he could not imagine troops there next year.
He said North Korea’s ballistic missile tests on Wednesday violated UN Security Council resolutions and promised an answer if the situation worsened, but said – like Trump – that he was willing to give diplomacy a chance if conditioned “to the final result of denuclearization.”
And while he declined to answer specific questions about Trump-era tariffs in China, saying they “just touch a little bit of what the relationship with China really means,” his government has left them in place for the time being, believing that they would provide a lever for future negotiations.
Asked whether North Korea is still the main foreign policy problem he currently faces – something that Obama warned that Trump would be the case when he took office in 2016 – Biden said yes.
“Yes,” he said, without giving further details.