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President Joe Biden departed Tuesday for the US Virgin Islands, exchanging a deadly snowstorm for a Caribbean vacation — and an expected New Year’s resolution to seek re-election in 2024.
He took flack from early morning Fox News hosts for being “ready to go have a good time” while Americans confront the blizzard.
However, Biden headed to the island of St Croix with a successful 2022 behind him and momentum building for him to declare, at the unprecedented age of 80, that he wants another four years in the White House.
If nothing else, the week’s holiday in the sun will be a welcome break for a president whose first two years in office featured an incredible series of crises — most of them inherited when he took over at the already record age of 78.
The first half of his term saw the peak and ebb of the Covid pandemic, a humiliating exit from the two-decades-old Afghanistan war, 40-year-high inflation, and the continuing fallout from his Republican predecessor Donald Trump’s attempt to upend US democracy.
The Democrat’s planned New Year’s getaway in Puerto Rico last December was canceled at the last minute because of the Covid Omicron surge.
Today, though, Biden is ready for the beach.
At home, his party scored a string of 2022 legislative victories, rounded off with December’s bill protecting same-sex marriage. Once soaring gasoline prices — the most politically damaging line item in any inflation spreadsheet — are almost back to normal.
