The Biden Era: Will it really make a difference?
By Zoë Foures-Kurt
In his victory speech, Biden qualified his mandate and the four years to come as “a time to heal”. But will his actions live up to those words and be enough to heal a deeply wounded country?
In the first hours of his presidency, Biden had already made some major changes to Trump’s mandate in order to rebuild the country from there – especially on an international scale, where there are many alliances to rebuild. After Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, one of Biden’s first decisions was to re-enter it. He declared climate change as being one of the top four issues for his administration; this gave a clear message to other countries that Biden takes collaboration and the international community seriously, therefore shifting the focus of Trump’s ‘America Alone’ stance.
On a national scale, Biden’s main wish was to shut down harsh rhetoric that stemmed from the Trump era and to learn how to communicate as a country with common goals rather than fuelling the narrative of two opposite camps in a binary political system. When he shaped his team, Biden recognised that, as an old white man, he could not offer what America needed most at the moment. This is why he chose Kamala Harris as his Vice-President, a child of immigrants who wishes to create a pathway and “leave the door more open than it was when [she] walked in”; a woman of colour as Veep for a country who might not be ready for a woman of colour as President. After their country was cleaved more deeply than ever by four years in Trump’s hands, the Biden administration chose restoration as their first priority. They claimed that change could not come if the country did not take time to heal. By inheriting the White House, Biden first needed to untangle all of Trump’s worst doings and limit their consequences. The United States was hit the hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic because of Trump’s carelessness and unwillingness to act. Biden thus put forward the ‘Build Back Better’ nine-hundred-billion-dollar plan, whose goal is to help the economy’s recovery – which might take until 2023, therefore occupying most of his mandate. He also signed for the abandonment of Trump’s infamous border wall, which had already drained eleven-billion-dollars taken directly from taxpayers’ pockets.
“He declared climate change as being one of the top four issues for his administration; this gave a clear message to other countries that Biden takes collaboration and the international community seriously, therefore shifting the focus of Trump’s ‘America alone’ stance. ”
But even with all of Biden’s wish and the Democrats’ usual vow to do better, there remains a perpetual ignorance to many problems the United States have been facing for decades – sometimes centuries.
Internationally, Biden has talked with several figureheads of other countries, such as Putin and Xi Jinping. American relations with China have been strained since Trump’s mandate, so Biden needed to rectify it quickly in order to try and improve those relations. However, when the conversation shifted towards the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden took most people by surprise by taking a stance more similar to what Trump would have done. The WHO had experts dispatched to China and concluded that they found no proof that the COVID-19 virus had actually originated from there; Biden, against most expectations, rejected this stance and started a fully independent second investigation to find answers – distrusting the WHO, which is supposed to be independent in the first place. Biden drew hard lines which, while showing where his administration stands, did not necessarily improve already-strained relations with a country that showed the threat of a potential cold war if those relations did not improve.
“Biden remains America’s usual old Democrat President; no matter how many good intentions he wants to put forward during his mandate, his persona has settled into a comfort zone: a man from an older generation, who did not particularly suffer from the many inequalities hitting many Americans on the daily, and therefore misunderstands them.”
Biden remains America’s usual old Democrat President; no matter how many good intentions he wants to put forward during his mandate, his persona has settled into a comfort zone: a man from an older generation, who did not particularly suffer from the many inequalities hitting many Americans on the daily, and therefore misunderstands them. Minimises them. A man who might not worsen the state of the country, but who won’t enact the change deeply needed to move the United States forward. The equivalent of a progressive leftist candidate in places like Europe is what Americans consider a harmful communist, extremist, madman candidate to be. In this past election, this man was Bernie Sanders; and while he gained a broader electorate than ever before, people still went to Biden: the safe, if not a bit useless, choice.
Biden inherited a country cleaved by many issues on a national level. The racial-justice protests of last summer were a clear test for Biden and the way he would handle other issues were he to become President: too slowly, and too willing to find a middle ground to actually enact change. Trying to calm the masses with words instead of actions by not being willing to defund the police in a system that is inherently oppressive. A lot of people already feel forgotten by the Biden administration in the priorities that have been established and who do not include pressing issues that need urgent change: gun violence, crushing debt problems in third-level education, and systemic racism that dates back centuries and has been left unchecked for too long.
