Karen Tumulty: Biden’s year of hard lessons

The Washington that Joe Biden inhabits as president bears little resemblance to the one he thought he would be presiding over when he took office a year ago — one in which he believed it was still possible to bring people together across the partisan divide. During his presidential campaign and in the weeks before he took office, Biden sounded supremely confident about his potential to be a dealmaker who could navigate the political undercurrents of the Senate where he served for 36 years. “I’m going to say something outrageous: I’m not bad at this,” the president-elect told a small group of columnists, of whom I was one. “Part of this is convincing people what their mutual interest is. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not going to get anyone from the Proud Boys to some of our really, really strident Republicans,” he said. “I’m not going to get those folks. I don’t have to get those folks, I don’t think. But part of it is making a case — and I think there’s a case that can be made — that demonstrates that … everything from racial equity to environmental progress to plain old jobs can be had in a way that everybody can sign on to.”

If only. Biden’s first year has brought some major achievements: a $1.9 trillion covid-19 relief package; a vaccine rollout that has resulted in nearly 63 percent of the population fully immunized; a modern record for the number of new federal judicial vacancies filled by a first-year president. But of his big successes, only one — the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill he signed in November — made it over the finish line with bipartisan support. Meanwhile, as his presidency approaches its first anniversary on Thursday, it appears to be running out of gas. Biden’s job approval numbers are underwater, averaging in the low 40s. The Democrats’ push for voting rights is headed for defeat on the Senate floor. His ambitious Build Back Better legislation is stymied. As a new variant of the coronavirus is sending record numbers to the hospital, the Supreme Court has struck down his administration’s vaccine-or-test mandate for private business. Inflation is running at its highest rate since the 1980s, dampening an otherwise robust economic recovery. That Biden then invited both Sinema and Manchin — another holdout against suspending the filibuster — to meet with him at the White House that evening was seen as yet more evidence of the president’s impotence. Whether all of this will ultimately be viewed as a hinge point of the Biden presidency, or just a pothole in the road, will depend at least in part on factors that are out of his control — among them, the performance of the economy and the course of a tenacious pandemic that has gripped the country for nearly two years. But one thing is clear: The era of bipartisan good feeling and shared interest that Biden once envisioned is not going to happen.