Biden's presidency and the 'First Hundred Days' myth

The pressure of spin has forced the planting of policy time bombs. What the White House has achieved so far cannot be a sound predictor of all 1,460 days in sum.

US President Joe Biden is betting that no fiddler will demand payment on a vastly expanding debt before early November 2024. PHOTO: AFP
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The American media is flush with "First Hundred Days" assessments of the Biden administration, even before the 100th-day mark on April 29, and the obvious is, well, obvious: The United States now has a head of government who doesn't assume that government and its administrative appendages are evil, whose core political strategy is not to sow division and harvest the fears it yields, whose occasional misstatements are not deliberately incendiary fact-free manipulations, and whose capacity for both empathy and shame suggests a normal human being in the key position of national leadership. The daily newspaper has become almost boring at times. This is good, yes?

It is, undoubtedly. But as important as appearances are, they're not the whole story. Yet, appropriately enough, appearances point to the revelatory inner story within the outer story that explains how the "First Hundred Days" hype arose in the first place.

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