The distillation of the Biden governing doctrine is one that relies on basic nuts and bolts, as he suggested the country’s political system can handle only so much at once.
President Biden, answering the 29th question in his first presidential news conference on the 65th day in office, offered one of the clearest distillations of his theory of his presidency and how its success will be measured. “It’s a matter of timing,” he said, in an answer in which he was referring to gun control measures but could have been referencing almost any part of his agenda. “As you’ve all observed, successful presidents better than me have been successful in large part because they know how to time what they’re doing. Order it, decide and prioritize what needs to be done.” The arc of history, in Biden’s view, comes down to pragmatism. It explains how he has approached his opening months in office, and how he is looking at the coming years. It illustrates how he can describe some Republican policies as “sick” and “un-American” while not doing everything in his power to immediately stop them. He called the filibuster a racist relic of Jim Crow, while also insisting that he wasn’t ready to remove it entirely in the hopes there would be some compromise. “Successful electoral politics is the art of the possible,” he said. whether he’s a strong-armed, dealmaking man of the Senate like Lyndon B. Johnson or a New Deal, government-spending president like Franklin D. Roosevelt — the hour-long session with reporters revealed how Biden is attempting to be a combination, with his own twists. Biden is a politician who craves simple language over soaring rhetoric. He often asks his aides to explain things to him, and the public, the same way they would talk to their mothers. And as he stood in the ornate East Room of the White House on Thursday, the distillation of the Biden governing doctrine is one that relies on basic nuts and bolts. “When I took office, I decided that it was a fairly basic, simple proposition. And that is I got elected to solve problems,” Biden said. He sought to speak to the frustrations around inaction on gun control, or the multipronged crisis around immigration, or the threats to voting rights. But on many of those issues, he urged a bit of patience, saying that the coronavirus and the economic devastation were more urgent priorities and that the country’s political system can handle only so much at once. “We’re gonna move on these one at a time, try to do as many simultaneous as we can,” he said. “But that’s the reason why I focused as I have.” Biden also witnessed up close some of the decisions former president Barack Obama made, attempting to pursue health-care legislation in a way that took more than a year, only to see immigration and gun control fall into his second term — and both of which were stymied in Congress. Deeming himself “a fairly practical guy,” Biden said, “I’m going to deal with all those problems. The question is the priorities as they come and land on my plate.” 4 takeaway’s from Biden’s first White House news conference It was in many ways a reflection of Biden as a candidate.
