It's The Governing, Stupid

March 8 - Joe Biden may be the single most prepared and experienced person to ever be President of the United States, and that experience, and the hard fought wisdom which often comes with it, has been on full display in these early days of his new Administration.  On the issue which matters most, defeating COVID, we’ve already seen truly dramatic improvements – COVID’s spread has dramatically declined, and the vaccine rollout dramatically accelerated.  The weakening of the virus also led to an impressive number of jobs created in February. In the DC area some schools have begun to announce plans to return to full in person instruction in late April. The soon to be signed into law American Rescue Plan will do much to ensure that the progress we’ve made against COVID is maintained in the coming months, and that something like normal life is possible to imagine again. 

It is clear that his many years of experience has taught Biden that to govern well he needs an experienced and capable team, for the issues in front of the United States are beyond the capacity of a single person, or even small, expert team to manage. Despite the enormity of the challenges COVID and economic struggles have brought, Biden is also working on immigration reform and smart border management, infrastructure and climate, reasserting American’s rightful role in the world, a new wave of state sponsored cyber-attacks and past election interference by foreign actors, extreme weather, emergent supply chain issues for American businesses, domestic radicalization, strengthening the ACA……even repairing the Post Office, and the Census, both broken by the previous Administration.  The ambition the President is showing is due in part to the excellence of the team he is building – it is work that must get done, but with his able team, it is work that can get done. 

Successful Obama and Clinton Administrations have left the Democratic Party with very experienced and capable executive branch veterans.  Joe Biden was relentless in recruiting into government at this challenging time the very best of this world, and together they are building a formidable team, one which has begun to harness the awesome power of government when virtuously used for the public good.  After years of Trump’s feckless and shambolic “management” of the US government, this head down, quiet professionalism is a welcome development indeed; it will also put greater and greater distance between the progress the new government makes on the problems we face and the increasingly absurd remnants (Dr. Seuss????) of the once proud Republican Party.