The first 100 days for the new president were filled with checks, needles, and normalcy. President Biden largely pursued his own agenda in the early months of his administration. He pushed through a $1.9 trillion stimulus package, accelerated vaccine distribution, and implemented policies on infrastructure, child care, education, climate change, and other Democratic priorities. The media gleefully reported on Washington’s return to normalcy. Mr. Biden, on the other hand, was allowed to be, well, boring.
For a politician who once described himself as a “gaffe machine,” the ability to keep a low profile was a remarkable change. In fact, being boring became a kind of Biden superpower, as the new president’s measured tone and steady demeanor helped deflect criticism of his administration’s proposed $6 trillion in new federal spending.
It wasn’t that Mr. Biden wasn’t in the news anymore. His team, on the other hand, projected the image of a drama-free White House, focused on restoring calm after the Trump administration’s chaos. Well, turmoil has returned this week. A succession of crises has demonstrated how rapidly a president’s agenda may be overtaken, which is why the first 100 days are generally referred to as the honeymoon phase.
Divisive issues are quickly rising to the forefront of national debate, posing early challenges for the new White House. They’ve come as an unwelcome distraction for some in the administration, threatening to derail the president’s carefully crafted message.
This isn’t a surprising turn: a president’s tenure is typically defined by the unexpected. Bill Clinton came into office with little experience in international policy, but was swiftly thrust into complicated wars in Haiti, Somalia, and Rwanda. George W. Bush’s first administration was marked by terrorist attacks. In his second term, a 90 percent approval rating based on his leadership following the September 11 attacks was tarnished by his handling of Hurricane Katrina, which became a modern metaphor for a mishandled disaster. Barack Obama was elected president in the midst of an economic downturn, and subsequently confronted the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. And Donald J. Trump’s response to the coronavirus outbreak will go down in history as a pivotal moment in his presidency.
The founder of the Arab American Institute, James Zogby, remarked, “You don’t judge presidents by the agenda they establish for themselves; you measure them by how they respond to the agenda that’s established for them.” “President Biden’s agenda has now been set.”
But this White House, in particular, has displayed a steadfast refusal to allow external events derail its goals. Mr. Biden’s efforts to avert such wide-ranging crises were evident in his response to the recent outbreak of violence in Israel and Gaza. His government has shown no interest in negotiating a peace agreement, preferring to focus on “conflict management” rather than “conflict resolution,” according to one former ambassador to Israel.
While Mr. Biden mostly kept to the decades-old Democratic playbook of expressing solidarity with Israel, several members of his party broke ranks to openly criticize his administration for what they saw as a readiness to turn a blind eye to Palestinian human rights violations.
