President Joe Biden speaks about the omicron variant of the
coronavirus in the State Dining Room of the White House December 21, 2021 in
Washington, DC.
Wilmington, Delaware (CNN)President JoeBiden will return to the White House from an abbreviated winter break
facing a set of hurdles that will test his political, diplomatic and management
skills at a trying moment for his presidency.
The raging pandemic, a crisis with Russia and uncertainty surrounding his prized
domestic priorities all await Biden in the new year. Determined to reset after
a series of struggles -- and to recalibrate expectations that some of his
allies believe were unrealistic -- the President is hopeful the coming weeks
can provide much-needed momentum as another election cycle dawns.
Biden spent much of his time away from Washington over the
past week on the phone discussing the days ahead with advisers and others in
his extended orbit, plotting next steps in what could prove a pivotal month for
his presidential ambitions. That includes preparation for a speech marking next
week's one-year anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot, a moment that
underscores the stakes of his tenure and the strained political environment in
which he governs.
His team is still regrouping after Sen. Joe Manchin, the
moderate West Virginia Democrat, threw the future of his sweeping economic plan into doubt the Sunday before
Christmas. In the days after his announcement, which surprised and angered
Biden's aides, Manchin made particular note of his annoyance with White House
staff, claiming they undermined the negotiation process and cryptically citing
a perceived slight that drove him to his "wit's end."
Since then, tensions seem to have cooled, though Biden told
reporters on Tuesday he hadn't spoken to Manchin this week. White House
officials are hopeful talks can be revived on a more limited bill, or set of
bills, in the new year.
"President Biden, who I have worked for for many years
... has a habit of pulling legislative rabbits out of hats. And has done so
many times," said Jared Bernstein, the president's top economist, on CNN.
"He is not by any means done fighting for Build Back Better. When I talk
to him about that, he has some confidence about that."
Democrats in Congress, who have been left politically
vulnerable by retirements and GOP redistricting plans, enter the midterm
election cycle eager for Biden and Manchin to strike some kind of accord, even
if the final package lacks the ambition of the sweeping social and climate bill
the President initially proposed.
"I think it is important we pass whatever components we
can through Congress and get them signed into law," said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi,
a Democrat from Illinois, this week. "If we do that, we make our own luck
and increase the chances of doing better in the midterms and delivering for the
American people."
Viewed by the President and his team as a rebuilding year
after the tumult of the Donald Trump era, 2021 was marked by a series of
challenges that dramatically eroded Biden's political standing. His approval
rating entered negative territory over the summer and has not rebounded since.
The sour national mood belies a strong economic record,
including the creation of nearly 6 million jobs. New jobless claims fell this week to a 52-year low. Other
indicators have shown near-record levels of growth as the economy rebounds from
pandemic-era shutdowns.
Biden was also able to pass two major pieces of legislation
-- a Covid relief package and a massive infrastructure bill -- and successfully
rolled out a vaccination campaign to hundreds of millions of Americans, even if
a stubbornly large percentage of the country still refuses the shot.
Biden and his advisers have been frustrated those
achievements were obscured by other challenges, like a messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, slogging negotiations
among Democrats over the domestic spending bill, supply chain issues, high inflation and the still-raging pandemic.
Unlike some of his predecessors, Biden opted against
convening a year-end press conference to discuss the year's achievements or his
priorities for 2022. He sat for one news interview, with ABC, and appeared on Jimmy Fallon's late-night show, but otherwise left public
assessments of his first year to others.
"Here's the deal," Biden told Fallon, "we've
been in less than a year, a lot has happened. Look, people are afraid, people
are worried, and people are getting so much inaccurate information to them. I
don't mean about me, but about their situation. And so they're, you know,
they're being told that, you know, Armageddon is on the way."
Biden spent two nights at his Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home
after Christmas with members of his extended family and a new German Shepherd puppy, emerging once to walk the dog --
which he received as a birthday gift from his brother -- along the Atlantic. He
departed the beach one day earlier than originally planned to return to his
main house in Wilmington, which is situated more privately than his oceanfront
property.
It was from there he spoke by telephone with Vladimir Putin
on Thursday, hoping to defuse a crisis on the Ukrainian border. The
conversation did not yield much clarity over whether the Russian president
plans to invade Ukraine, as the West fears he might. Biden, who spent the
preceding days conferring with his secretary of state and national security
adviser by telephone, is hopeful diplomatic talks early next month in Europe
can help ease the situation.
The Ukraine standoff is an opportunity for Biden to repair a
foreign policy reputation damaged by a chaotic and deadly withdrawal from
Afghanistan over the summer, which angered US allies and led to questions about
the President's diplomatic acumen.
The administration's admitted failure to foresee how quickly
the Taliban would retake control was one in a roster of items that seemed to
catch Biden and his advisers off-guard this year. Other examples included
persistent inflation that officials once described as "transitory,"
the emergence of the highly transmissible Omicron variant and a shortage of Covid-19
tests that Biden is now hurriedly working to remedy.
The White House is expected to soon unveil details
surrounding the rollout of the 500 million free at-home tests Biden promised
all Americans last week, though a series of questions about the logistics and
capacity of the program remain unanswered. The vaccine mandates he sought to
implement will also face the Supreme Court this week.
The resurgent coronavirus shadowed the President's festive
season as national case counts rose to record levels this week and strained
hospitals in certain areas of the country. Over the Christmas weekend, Biden
took notice of long lines at testing centers that aired on television.
It was, for Biden, another pandemic-related disappointment in
a year that fell short of nearly everyone's expectations. A July 4 ceremony
marking "Independence from Covid-19" was followed nearly immediately
by a surge of the Delta variant. Biden said during a CNN town hall last
February that he hoped by the Christmas holidays -- then still 11 months away
-- "we'll be in a very different circumstance, God willing, than we are
today."
"A year from now, I think that there'll be significantly
fewer people having to be socially distanced, having to wear a mask," he
said then -- a goal that, at the time, seemed dully unambitious.
The Bidens had once hoped to escape somewhere warmer for the
week between Christmas and New Year's Day, as they usually did before the
pandemic. But those plans were abandoned in mid-December, and instead the
President's family requested a Christmas Eve at the White House.
Before departing for Delaware, Biden spoke by video link to
the nation's governors and assured them he was standing ready to provide
support to states in need, even as he acknowledged shortcomings in his testing
strategy.
"It's clearly not enough," he said after listing
which steps he has taken to ramp up test capacity. "If I had -- we had
known, we would have gone harder, quicker if we could have."
At the same time, the White House has begun a concerted shift
away from focusing exclusively on case counts as a barometer for the pandemic,
hoping to hone in on severity of cases as measured in hospitalizations. A CDC
decision this week to halve the number of recommended isolation days post-infection
-- driven in part by a desire to keep businesses running as employees become
infected -- reflected a response increasingly attuned to living with a virus
that shows no signs of disappearing completely.
"If you're in office, you're accountable and you're
always going to be subject to criticism. When you manage a pandemic, you're not
running a popularity contest. You're trying to manage the situation so you
minimize the amount of pain as much as possible and allow people to lead their
lives," said Andy Slavitt, who was Biden's top pandemic adviser earlier in
the administration.
Still looming in the middle distance is Biden's first State
of the Union, a moment advisers hope to use to define the first year of Biden's
presidency on their own terms. Tentatively set for early February, the speech
will also provide a chance to adjust expectations for the coming months. Work
has already begun on the outline of the address.
It could be Biden's final address to a Congress controlled in
both chambers by Democrats, a matter of urgency if he hopes to pass the major
items on his priority list. That includes protections for voting rights, an
issue Biden has said has no equal when it comes to preserving American
democracy.
The coming weeks will prove critical for the push to
safeguard access to the ballot, and Biden along with Vice President Kamala
Harris -- tasked with leading on the issue from within the White House -- are
planning a renewed drive to pass stalled pieces of legislation. That includes
using the January 6 anniversary to call for greater democratic protections.
Civil rights groups have called on Biden to get something
done by the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday mid-month. How that is accomplished,
however, remains an open question.
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