Less than two months after taking office, President Biden reached a crucial week on the anniversary of the COVID-19 blockades, which could shape the rest of his tenure at the White House.
Once Congress gives final approval midweek, he will sign his $ 1.9 trillion plan to extend aid to most Americans and small businesses. With vaccinations on the rise, on Monday his government gave a glimpse of the normality that awaits him, issuing guidelines on how inoculated Americans can safely start mixing indoors, without masks or detachment. And he continues to pressure people to follow restrictions on coronavirus, an increasingly difficult challenge as some Republican-led states lift their rules.
For Biden, who bet on the presidency to end the pandemic and restore the economy, a wrong path could cost him public support and increase the chances of Democrats losing their narrow majority in Congress, damaging him for the rest of his term.
So far, however, Biden has garnered strong support. Seventy percent of Americans approve of the work he is doing in the pandemic, according to a recent survey by the Associated Press and the University of Chicago’s NORC Center for Public Affairs. The latest Gallup poll found that 6 out of 10 Americans believe the coronavirus crisis is easing.
The high marks reflect Biden’s dogged dedication to the pandemic since taking office. This week, he is tackling the problem almost daily. On Monday, he visited Veterans Affairs hospital in Washington, where he talked with the team about vaccine administration.
“We are really distorting the speed right now,” he said, a joking reference to “Operation Warp Speed,” the Trump administration’s vaccine development program. An average of nearly 2.2 million injections are injected every day, more than double the pace when President Trump stepped down.
On Tuesday, Biden is scheduled to stop at a business that has benefited from the Paycheck Protection Program, which has supported small businesses for nearly a year and is scheduled to receive more money from the latest aid package. On Wednesday, he is welcoming executives from Johnson & Johnson and Merck, two pharmaceutical rivals who are partnering to accelerate vaccine production. And on Thursday, Biden will deliver a prime-time speech marking a year since the country began to close its doors to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
“There is no problem that worries Americans more than keeping the pandemic under control,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said at Monday’s briefing. “The American people know why we have a recession, why so many families are concerned about putting food on the table, why parents across the country are concerned about the impact of school closures on the mental health of their children and in their learning, it is because of the pandemic. “
It is a sharp shift from Trump’s erratic management and reluctance to acknowledge the seriousness of a crisis that has cost the lives of more than 525,000 Americans.
Peter Hart, a Democratic researcher, said Biden’s serious and constant focus on the pandemic served him well.
“A lot of presidents in his first 100 days have been in conflict with one thing or another, but he didn’t really have it,” said Hart. “What strikes me is how serious he has been. He takes his work as seriously as the American public has had to take their lives. He’s in sync with the audience. “
Biden, noted Hart, limited his public appearances and attracted less media attention – and fewer Republican attacks – than the two previous Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, whose presidencies were more “personality-driven”. And unlike Trump, his media-obsessed predecessor, Biden did not try to dominate all the ephemeral news cycles.
“He is a workhorse, not a show horse, and he is not caught in the same way,” said Hart. “He did not delve into things that were not important and kept to the important issues.”
Biden also followed a time-honored practice: promising little and overdelivering. He said initially that there would be enough vaccines by the end of the summer to vaccinate all American adults, then, last week, he accelerated the schedule for the end of May, when he announced the partnership between Johnson & Johnson and Merck. On Saturday, he increased the target again, a few weeks until mid-May.
The government’s approach in its first 50 days was informed in large part by the experiences of Biden and his advisers in the early Obama administration and his retrospective view on how to avoid the pitfalls that prevented them then – how to wait and make concessions in return for Republican support. that never came.
Biden, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.), all cited the early 2009 lessons of the $ 787 billion American Recovery Act, which was much smaller than many economists recommended addressing what was, at the time, the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Biden’s aid package, called the American Rescue Plan, is more than double Obama’s stimulus. He is expected to arrive at his desk this week after a final vote in Congress, perhaps on Wednesday.
As the legislation approached the final Senate vote over the weekend, the president asked Democrats to “speak up and speak up” about his provisions, reflecting yet another lesson from 2009: Obama’s reluctance to celebrate his stimulus is over damaging the Democrats politically.
“Barack was so modest that he didn’t want to take a victory lap,” said Biden. “We pay a price for that, ironically, that humility.”
How voters will respond to relief will be a key question. The president’s party usually loses seats in Congress in the first midterm election, and Democrats have no room for error in the House or the Senate.
Biden is also under pressure to show that life is returning to normal at least a little. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday that Americans who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can visit others in small indoor meetings, without masks or social distance.
“You can visit your grandparents if you have been vaccinated and so will they,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s leader.
It is more complicated when vaccinated people mix with unvaccinated people. She said those who are vaccinated can safely attend small meetings if unvaccinated people are at low risk of serious illness. Mitigation steps, such as masks or outdoor meetings, remain necessary if vulnerable people are involved, according to the guidelines.
“We are starting to turn the corner,” said Walensky. More than 31 million Americans have been fully vaccinated and 59 million have received at least one dose.
Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety, said she hoped the new guidelines would help persuade more people to be vaccinated. “This has been a problem since the beginning,” he said. “What incentive do people have to get the vaccine if it doesn’t change their lives?”
The high number of cases and the threat of new virus variants, even with the increase in vaccinations, have complicated the White House’s public health messages. The authorities have encouraged people to get vaccinated and promise that “there is light at the end of the tunnel”, in Biden’s words. At the same time, they pressured Americans to maintain social distance and to continue wearing masks.
“This is a war,” said Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to the White House task force COVID-19, “and we can’t give up.”