Biden opened the press conference by announcing a new plan to administer two hundred million vaccines by his hundredth day in office and a vow to get a majority of elementary and middle schools open by then. The killings in Georgia and Colorado over the past week forced Biden to cancel part of his carefully planned “help is here” tour to tout the COVID-relief package-a reminder that, no matter how disciplined and organized his Administration is, no matter the contrast to Trumpian chaos, all leaders fall prey to the press of urgent and unanticipated crises. Sixty-five days into Biden’s tenure, there was plenty to ask him about, even in the absence of the Trump-manufactured dramas that fuelled the news in the past few years: horrific mass shootings, escalating tensions with China and Russia, missile tests by North Korea, and, oh, yes, the pandemic. Reporters, based on the questions, agreed. Republicans, it could be said, succeeded in one respect with their preshow spin: they wanted Biden to be on the defensive talking about immigration and the border, not the passage of his $1.9 trillion COVID-relief package and the success of his vaccine campaign. With his critics having set such a low bar, it should surprise no one that Biden, who did, after all, win a national election by surviving almost a dozen debates with his Democratic-primary rivals and two with Donald Trump, cleared it. Republicans-and the state-run media in Russia-seized on Biden’s reticence as proof that he was somehow too old or incoherent to face the rigors of extended, unscripted questioning. This was, after all, the longest a new President had gone without holding one since the Coolidge Administration. How is this even possible during a once-in-a-century public-health crisis, the combating of which was the central theme of Biden’s campaign and remains the central promise of his Presidency? It’s hard not to see it as anything other than an epic and utterly avoidable press fail.įor weeks, Washington clamored for a Biden press conference. There was not a single question, meanwhile, about the ongoing pandemic that for the past year has convulsed life as we know it and continues to claim an average of a thousand lives a day. In case you missed it, he is really, totally, absolutely committed to fixing the terrible situation at the border, and also not yet ready-because he does not have the votes-to commit to blowing up the filibuster. The majority of them were repetitive variants on one of two subjects: immigration and the Senate filibuster.īiden had no actual news to offer on either subject. By the end of it, after an hour and two minutes that felt much longer, Biden had answered some two dozen questions. Joe Biden’s first Presidential press conference, on Thursday, was one of them. Sometimes the big moments in our politics meet the very low expectations we have for them. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
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