100 days of Joe Biden

If it feels like you're living in a different America, it's because you are

One of the somewhat less than joyful things I get to do in this job is going back over our recent past.  Do you remember Trump’s first 100 days?  I didn’t think so. He spent some of that time appointing the most incompetent, corrupt cabinet in history.  Does the name Scott Pruitt bring back any memories?  Ryan Zinke?  Tom Price?  Rex Tillerson?  They were just some of the geniuses Trump appointed to serve in his cabinet. 

Longest to serve turned out to be Interior Secretary Zinke, who resigned in December of 2018 under a cloud of investigations into sweetheart land deals, one of which was with oil giant Halliburton, involving federal lands in his home state of Wyoming.  As Interior secretary, Zinke was of course in charge of federal lands.

Pruitt, the EPA administrator who didn’t believe humans contributed to climate change and thought the whole “global warming” thing was a hoax, was out in July of 2018.  He was the subject of no less than 14 investigations into his personal spending, travel in first class and chartering private planes on the taxpayer’s dime, conflicts of interest, and extreme secrecy (he had his own personal SKIF, a “sensitive compartmental information facility,” built in his EPA office, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars).

Secretary of State Tillerson, who held a grand total of one press conference during his time in office, made it until March of 2018 when he was fired for having called Trump “a fucking moron” after a Pentagon meeting Trump held with senior national security officials including the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  His major accomplishment in office was cutting the State Department budget by 30 percent and driving 50 percent of long-serving foreign service officers out of the department.

Tom Price became the shortest serving Secretary of Health and Human Services in history when he resigned in September of 2017 after enduring investigations into his abuse of government travel regulations.  He spent over $1 million on private planes and use of military aircraft, including chartering a private jet to fly from Washington D.C. to Philadelphia, a journey that can be made by train in less than two hours.

Trump spent a good deal of the rest of his time lying and tweeting.  The Washington Post Fact Checker counted 511 outright lies or partial falsehoods Trump told in his first 100 days.  According to a count kept by CNN, he thumbed-out at least 500 tweets during that time, including his famous tweet on March 4, 2017 from Mar a Lago, “Terrible!  Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory.  Nothing found.  This is McCarthyism!”  This was the tweet, of course, that led to FBI Director James Comey being called before the house intelligence committee where he promptly announced that Trump and his campaign had been under investigation since July of 2016 for contacts with Russians.  CNN attributed 18 of Trump’s tweets to personal attacks on individuals, 26 on conspiracy theories, 53 complaining about the press, 86 bragging about himself, 165 on political argument or commentary, and 142 “typical” presidential tweets, the first time in my recollection that there were such things.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, has made a grand total of 67 false or misleading claims according to the Post fact checker.  Rather than lying and tweeting at high speed, Biden has spent his first 100 days doing things like vaccinating 220 million Americans against the coronavirus, which is more than double the 100 million he had set for himself as a goal.  His cabinet appointments have been people with long histories working in areas of expertise relevant to their positions.  He appointed the first woman Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, who had just served as chairman of the Federal Reserve.  He appointed the first Native American as Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico.  He appointed the first openly gay cabinet member ever, Pete Buttigieg, as Secretary of Transportation.  He appointed the first Latino Secretaries of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, Alejandro Mayorkas and Xavier Becerra.  He appointed Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defense, the first Black man to serve in that office, and Michael S. Regan to head up the EPA, another first for an African American.  Austin had previously served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, and Regan had been secretary of environmental quality in North Carolina.

Biden re-entered the Paris Climate Accords, pledged to cut carbon emissions by 50 percent in the next decade, and has returned auto emissions standards to where they were under the Obama administration.  While Trump praised Russian president Vladimir Putin and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Biden has expelled 20 Russian diplomats from this country as punishment for Russian interference in the 2020 election and publicly warned Putin to stay out of American politics.  Rather than praise Erdogan, Biden pissed him off by formally recognizing the Turkish slaughter of Armenians in the early 20th century as a genocide, something Trump and other presidents have refused to do.  Biden’s first overseas trip will be to Great Britain for the Group of Seven summit in June.  From there he will travel to Brussels, Belgium to confer with leaders of the European Union and attend a summit of NATO leaders, a sharp break from Trump’s constant criticism of both the EU and NATO.

Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill was passed on his 49th day in office and in his address to the joint session of congress this week he laid out his extensive plans for infrastructure, education, and jobs.

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. He faces stiff Republican opposition to his economic recovery plans, including by one member of his own party, West Virginia senator Joe Manchin.  His pledge to completely withdraw American forces from Afghanistan met with bi-partisan criticism, particularly in the national security community.  As leader of the Democratic Party, Biden faces a Republican Party bent on making voting more difficult for populations that lean Democratic.  On the COVID front, his campaign to vaccinate Americans has finally run into a wall of resistance from the so-called “vaccine hesitant,” a fact that will make reopening the economy this summer more difficult.

But Joe Biden, who throughout his political career has come across as good old bi-partisan Joe, happy to get along with everyone, has shown a surprising toughness.  He doesn’t appear ready to negotiate away the central themes of his plans for jobs and the economy, and he is taking a stand against entrenched institutional racism in this country that is giving Republicans fits. 

100 days ago, there were no COVID vaccinations available at all where I live on Long Island.  None were available through pharmacies.  There were no mass vaccination sites within 100 miles of here.  People I know were driving six and eight hours to upstate New York to get shots, and the COVID vaccine was available only to people over 70.  It looked like I wouldn’t be able to get vaccinated until mid-summer, and Tracy probably wouldn’t be eligible until the fall.

100 days later, everyone in New York state over the age of 16 is eligible to be vaccinated.  I got my shots in March.  Tracy got hers in April.  It’s looking like New York state businesses will be fully open with restaurants and bars at 100 percent by July the 4th. 

Joe Biden did this. He has played a single round of golf since the inauguration. But he hasn't issued a single looney-tunes tweet yet.  We are living in a different America.