After rocky start, can Biden recover in Year Two?

On this day a year ago, America turned the page from a most controversial president and toward a familiar face – one who many hoped could bring the nation together amid profound challenges. 

President Joe Biden centered his inaugural address on the theme of unity. A year later, the nation is as divided as ever, at least in modern times, and the challenges are just as acute: the pandemic, inflation, climate change, threats from major global adversaries. The new chief executive’s public approval has tanked. 

Can President Biden turn his fortunes around? His press conference Wednesday – a nearly two-hour marathon, aimed at both defending his performance and launching a reset – was a mixed bag. His eyebrow-raising statement on Ukraine, saying he expected Russia to invade, merited quick clarification from his press office and a follow-up from the president himself on Thursday. His murky pronouncement on the legitimacy of coming elections, if voting rights legislation doesn’t pass, also sparked a response from his press secretary.

But his willingness to change course on a stalled agenda, as well as his display of stamina, was also reassuring to some. 

Mr. Biden’s challenge is steep, particularly in these highly polarized times, analysts say. But many other first-year presidents have struggled – and watched their party get trounced in midterm elections – only to recover and win reelection. 

Mr. Biden’s task is multifold. He needs to log demonstrable successes, especially in the battle against COVID-19 and in the economy; avoid foreign policy disasters; and strengthen his public image. 

His first year, like the press conference, produced mixed results. The economy’s recovery of jobs lost to the pandemic was strong, and early on, he implemented two major programs. In March, passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan provided funding for vaccines, schools, small businesses, and anti-poverty programs. And his administration launched a vaccine distribution program hailed for its speed and wide availability to those who chose to vaccinate. 

“They got off to a really strong start,” says William Galston, a domestic policy adviser under President Bill Clinton. “That may have convinced them that they just had to keep on going, and all would be well. Well, they kept on going and all wasn’t well.”

Over the summer, the delta variant caused COVID-19 caseloads to surge again. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was chaotic. Inflation, which the administration initially dismissed as transitory, has grown to a 40-year high. Mr. Biden’s big spending package, the $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act, has hit a wall in Congress, as has voting rights legislation the president calls essential to preserving American democracy. 

When it comes to the pandemic – arguably the president’s most pressing challenge – top federal officials have faced criticism for confusing messaging and not being nimble enough with policy responses. With the omicron variant pushing caseloads to new highs, availability of test kits has lagged demand, as school districts and businesses have struggled to stay open.

“Doing the equivalent of hanging a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner over the White House on July 4 weekend was not wise,” says Mr. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. 

Test kits are about to arrive in homes across the country, courtesy of the federal government; a website that allows every household to order four free kits went live this week. And Mr. Biden is regrouping on his domestic agenda. At Wednesday’s press conference, he discussed breaking up Build Back Better and passing smaller pieces now – noting climate change and universal prekindergarten – then fighting for the rest later. 

A major bright spot for Mr. Biden in his first year was the November passage of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which will bring benefits to Americans across the country with investments in roads, bridges, water pipes, and rural broadband. Significantly, it passed with Republican votes, unlike the American Rescue Plan. 

Still, the president’s political capital has plummeted. The Gallup poll’s first measure of Mr. Biden’s job approval after taking office came in at 57% – well above the 51% of votes he won in defeating President Donald Trump. Now Mr. Biden is at 40%. During his first year in office, Gallup reports, the president averaged 49% approval, with only President Trump coming in lower (38%) among first-term presidents elected after World War II. Gallup also notes that Mr. Biden’s approval ratings reflect record political polarization for a first-year president.

Mr. Biden still has the muscle memory of a longtime senator who loved working across the aisle, welcoming meetings with members of both parties and speaking highly of Republicans – even those who have made clear they don’t want him to succeed. 

“I actually like Mitch McConnell,” he said Wednesday, referring to the Senate GOP leader. But, he said later, “the public doesn’t want me to be the ‘president senator.’ They want me to be the president, and let senators be senators.”

It was a reminder that the American presidency is as much a mindset as a job – and one that involves major on-the-job training, even for a man who served two terms as vice president and 36 years in the Senate before that. 

Looking ahead, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake predicts Mr. Biden’s public image will improve – particularly come spring, when infrastructure projects can start. 

“In April and May, it will be a very different ballgame,” says Ms. Lake, who does work for Mr. Biden and the Democratic National Committee. “Right now, nobody’s repairing a bridge or building a highway – you can’t do that with snow on the ground in places like Michigan and Wisconsin.”

She ascribes Mr. Biden’s low job approvals to people feeling upset with the direction of the country, and taking it out on the president. 

“We need to communicate better – as Democrats and as the administration – the accomplishments that have happened,” she says, while acknowledging that the pandemic and inflation are two “kitchen table” issues hitting voters every day and dragging the president down. 

Ms. Lake predicts that the midterm election campaigns now kicking into gear will provide oxygen to the president, as Democrats around the country defend his record. 

Black voters are a key constituency for Mr. Biden, and keeping that part of his base energized will be crucial. A recent study by Robert C. Smith, a political scientist at San Francisco State University, concluded that the Biden administration has been “the most responsive to Black interests since the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.” 

Even if Mr. Biden fails to pass voting rights legislation, as now seems certain, he needed to be seen trying, Professor Smith says. 

“A number of Black voting rights activists thought he wasn’t aggressive enough” in pushing to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate so the legislation could pass with a simple majority, he says. “He had to make that speech [on Jan. 11 in Atlanta] to let them know that he was doing everything he could. And he did.”

Perhaps Mr. Biden’s biggest unkept campaign promise – aside from “shutting down the virus” – is his pledge to unify the country. On its face, it seemed an unrealistic pledge, given the many factors feeding the nation’s political polarization, from partisan sorting along geographic lines to media echo chambers. There’s also the Trump effect: a one-term president who has refused to concede his loss, and may well run again, unlike other defeated former presidents in the modern era. 

“I don’t think Biden’s problems are because he follows Trump,” says Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University. “And polarization didn’t start with Trump. But he’s escalated it, and that’s the most important thing that has made governing so difficult for Joe Biden.”