President Biden’s closest advisers are discovering — or in some cases, rediscovering — that governing is harder than campaign-trail promises to return technocratic policymaking to Washington.
Several of Biden’s senior aides, whose collective experience he bragged about during the post-election transition, are not hitting the ground as smoothly as they likely expected almost two weeks after they moved into the White House and other federal government offices.
Biden hosted a Monday evening Oval Office meeting with Senate Republicans, for example, after complaints he hadn’t adequately consulted them and their colleagues regarding a coronavirus relief package. That’s despite Biden repeatedly saying that he would prefer to broker a bipartisan deal rather than resorting to a budgetary procedure called reconciliation to ram his $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” through the Senate with only Democratic support.
Political analyst Dan Schnur, a Republican-turned-independent now at the University of Southern California, said Biden should be more concerned about challenges from his own party than across the political aisle.
“Biden wants to be a bipartisan president, but he doesn’t seem to want to push back at congressional Democrats,” Schnur told the Washington Examiner. “There might still be a sweet spot that allows him to do both of those things. But right now, he might be the only one in Washington who can see it.”
Reconciliation requires a simple majority instead of a 60-vote, filibuster-proof margin in the Senate. But rather than trying to earn Republican support, the administration seems nervous that it won’t even be able to muster all 48 Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them behind the package after what was widely regarded as a ham-handed attempt to pressure centrist Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
Manchin publicly vented over the weekend about press interviews with West Virginia outlets Vice President Kamala Harris gave regarding coronavirus relief. In one of them, she mistakenly said “abandoned land mines” instead of “abandoned mine lands.” Harris is also not popular in West Virginia, a state former President Donald Trump won last November by 42 percentage points.
“We’ve been in touch with Sen. Manchin, as we have been for many weeks and will continue to be moving forward,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during her Monday afternoon briefing.
No Biden aides have signaled a feeling inside the West Wing that the Manchin- and Sinema-directed pressure campaign was a misstep.
With thin Democratic margins in both chambers, any negotiations will necessitate deft maneuvering by Biden and his staff, particularly as they argue time is of the essence on a COVID-19 recovery measure.
To hold his party together, Biden has to keep centrist Democrats, such as Manchin and Sinema, on side. Simultaneously, he has to be mindful of dissent from his left, including from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. For instance, the incoming Senate Budget Committee chairman and liberal icon is looking to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 via Democrats’ reconciliation measure.
Biden’s troubles, exacerbated by Trump’s pending impeachment trial, come after his pick to run his legislative affairs shop, Louisa Terrell, was lauded by Capitol Hill allies. The former Obama administration alumna’s House- and Senate-focused deputies, Reema Dodin and Shuwanza Goff, were well received too.
What’s more, Biden’s coronavirus response has also encountered hiccups.
Biden himself has muddled coronavirus messaging, appearing to up his administration’s 100-day vaccination target from 100 million shots to 150 million jabs — before Psaki the next day amended his comments.
“The president didn’t actually say, ’The new goal is…,’” Psaki said last week. “The president said, ‘I hope we can do even more than that.'”
The press secretary needed to correct Biden’s optimistic spring timeline for widespread vaccine access as well.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain, former President Barack Obama’s Ebola czar, similarly caused confusion when he erred on the details of how Biden was using the Defense Production Act. Klain said in an interview that the law had been invoked to make more specialized syringes and N95 masks. His remarks were later modified by Tim Manning, the coronavirus response’s supply coordinator.
Historian and politician commentator David Greenberg is not worried about Biden’s coronavirus missteps.
“I don’t think we know yet whether the Senate will pass a bipartisan or a Democrats-only version of the bill,” Greenberg said. “As for the vaccination numbers, I think the administration started with a realistic goal and is now trying to improve on it.”
For Greenberg, there was a more obvious “unforced error”: Biden’s advocacy of transgender athletes.
Biden signed an executive order during his highly choreographed first day in office banning discrimination against transgender people. The order, the result of transition planning that began last spring, requires biological males who identify as female to be permitted to take part in girls sporting events. Biden’s transition was led by former Delaware Democratic Sen. Ted Kaufman, who drafted 2010 transition process reforms.
Greenberg compared Biden’s decision to former President Bill Clinton’s now-defunct “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. That Pentagon directive prohibited openly gay military personnel from serving in the armed forces. It was then-Georgia Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn and outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell who forced Clinton’s hand, according to Greenberg.
“Biden had no reason to bring up trans issues. He should concentrate on the economy and big issues — climate change, for example — and leave the boutique, progressive culture-war issues for another day,” Greenberg said.
