First 50 days of President Biden

 I admire the leadership and boldness of President Biden. This opinion writer shares the same view.

New York Times:

Jamelle Bouie

March 13, 2021

Opinion Columnist

I think it’s a good exercise to return to your past predictions and analyses and take stock of what you got right and what you got wrong. In my case, looking back at what I wrote during the Democratic presidential primaries, I got one big thing wrong.

Joe Biden.

In 2019, I wrote that “the possibility of defeating Trump without defeating Trumpism looms over Joe Biden’s possible run for the 2020 Democratic nomination.” That a campaign centered on Biden’s appeal to white, blue-collar workers was a campaign that would recapitulate the conceit of “Make America Great Again” under the guise of rejecting it. And I worried, throughout the campaign, that Biden was simply not inclined to make the changes and force the confrontations necessary to de-Trumpify the government, much less push the country away from its austerity mind-set.

Looking at Biden’s nominations, appointments and executive actions thus far — looking at the size and scope of the relief bill and the extent to which he outright ignored Republican demands to make it smaller and less generous — it turns out I was wrong! I greatly underestimated Biden’s inclination and ability to do these things.

It is clear that Biden sees the presidency not as a capstone to a long career, but as a final opportunity to make his mark on the country, and he intends to do so. If these first 50 days are a sign of what’s to come, then his mark will be a much greater one than I could have ever anticipated.