President Biden posted some historic accomplishments during his White House honeymoon — but the methods he used to earn them threaten to poison the marriage.
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President Biden posted some historic accomplishments during his White House honeymoon — but the methods he used to earn them threaten to poison the marriage. He’s won the largest-ever spending bill from Congress, issued a flurry of executive actions reversing Trump policies, checked off his 200 million coronavirus vaccines goal and largely thrilled his left flank, while still posting impressive approval numbers among the rest of the population. But as he nears his 100th day in office the grim realities of governing in a deeply divided Washington are setting in, and the hardline approach he took toward negotiating with Republicans on the coronavirus spending bill has cost him considerable goodwill. “The legislative approach this administration deployed has been akin to Biden walking into the honeymoon suite to say he was going out with the fellas,” said Josh Holmes, a GOP consultant and former chief of staff to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “When you have explicit disrespect for bipartisanship from the jump it makes it significantly more difficult to find bipartisan support going forward.” Mr. Biden will have a chance to patch things when he addresses a joint session of Congress Wednesday. The next day he plans to travel to Georgia to take a victory lap highlighting the achievements of his first days in office. Mr. Biden campaigned on themes of bipartisanship and unity and battling his party’s socialist wing — but in office, he’s governed from well left of center. And he shunned overtures to work with Republicans, particularly on the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 spending bill, which passed with no GOP votes when Democrats used the budget process to avoid a filibuster. Mr. Biden’s team says the president is operating from a new definition of bipartisanship, one that gives more weight to the concerns of Republican voters than to elected GOP officials in Washington.
