By Kate Robinson
April 30 marks President Joe Biden’s 100th day in office. What started as a pleading call for unity and bipartisanship is shaping up to be nothing more than a far-left train wreck. Thus far, the 78-year-old commander-in-chief has proven that his administration is incapable of exhibiting competent leadership and clear articulation of its policies.
President Biden is so concerned about behaving in direct opposition to Donald Trump’s widely-criticized demeanor that he is turning himself into a weak and confusing ruler. This is seen in the way that his frustrations are masked through mass signings of executive orders (currently totaling over 60), his refusal to meet Republicans halfway on the COVID-19 stimulus bill, and his failure to elaborate on his radical policy proposals, such as his ultimate thoughts on a vaccine passport or his inability to explain the truth about his so-called infrastructure bill, which is really more of a progressive spending measure in disguise. So much for an honest leader who pledged to reach across the aisle.
Upon entering office, President Biden had one important task that the American people were counting on him to fix: the COVID-19 pandemic. He knew about this challenge before the inauguration, giving him ample time to devise his Seven Point Plan for tackling the virus, set a “goal” of 100 million shots in the first 100 days (even though the Trump administration was already close to accomplishing this) and work with governors to efficiently distribute the vaccine.
Even with the benefit of time, President Biden admitted that even he did not have control over his own agenda. “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.” How is that for a confident leader?
Perhaps that is why, when migrants unexpectedly flocked to the southern border a few weeks ago in the highest numbers that the United States has seen in three years, the Biden administration handled the event in the way that any weak leader would – by blaming the “dismantled” and “unworkable system” (as White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki deemed it) on the former president.
Anyone who followed the recent developments at the border would know that it was not Mr. Trump’s sound immigration policies of green card limitations and refugee restrictions (which were especially necessary during a pandemic) that were suddenly beginning to cause damage. Instead, it is simply that our current president had no plan for such a crisis and panicked. Perhaps this is why journalists were not initially given access to facilities and why children were haphazardly granted permission to enter the United States.
Core policy intentions aside, we actually have a President who cannot properly handle unforeseen challenges, let alone ones he was prepared for. No wonder thousands of migrants thought they could get away with entering our country illegally.
Where is the unity and bipartisanship that President Biden constantly preached about? Where is the strong, “moderate” leader that claimed we would be able to trust and count on? President Biden is governing the country as if Democrats slaughtered Republicans in November, as if more than 74 million Americans did not vote for his opponent. His narrow victory was certainly no mandate.
I would think that of everyone in Washington, D.C., President Biden, a former 36-year senator and two-term vice president, would be the first to recognize a leader whose agenda is wishy-washy and very misleading. But apparently, old age and being a career politician have gotten the best of him.
President Biden still has a chance to recover and make his first term a decent one. After all, he lucked out with an evenly-split senate and a close-to-equal House of Representatives. A strong and fair leader would use this opportunity to advocate for compromise and bipartisan policies – a rare commodity in politics.
The United States is witnessing a leader who has no plan, switches his tune depending on the day, and is still obsessing over replicating Obama’s presidency and trashing Trump’s. Our country deserves a president who can work with both sides of the aisle and be upfront about his views on policies, even when he might receive backlash or opposition. Unfortunately, President Biden is doing none of this.
To that, I say, “C’mon, man!”
Ms. Robinson is a freshman at Chapman University majoring in Strategic & Corporate Communication and a columnist for The Hesperian.