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Jan 23rd 2021

WASHINGTON, DC

MANY PRESIDENTS assume office in the grip of a crisis. Joe Biden faces at least four. Covid-19 is a public-health disaster: the disease has killed over 400,000 in America and continues to rage while a disorganised vaccination drive sputters. The virus has wreaked economic devastation: 10m fewer Americans are employed than before the pandemic; two-thirds of children cannot attend school in person; one in eight adults are skipping meals. Bitter divisions over racial justice fester. And a partisan rancour has poisoned Americans faith in their democracy.

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Mr Biden acknowledged this in his inaugural address on January 20th. He spoke to an America that feels perhaps more deeply divided than at any time since Abraham Lincoln delivered his second in 1865, when the Confederate rebellion was in its death throes. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right...let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nations wounds, urged Lincoln. Two weeks after an insurrectionist mob hoisted the Confederate battle flag in the Capitolsomething Confederate soldiers had not done during the civil warMr Biden called for a moment of national healing. Without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.

During his campaign Mr Biden vowed to restore Americas soul. That is a daunting task. After Donald Trumps supporters vandalised the Capitol, an impeachment trial for the former president looms. At least 25,000 members of the armed forces were stationed in Washington, DCmore than are currently deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq combinedto secure the peaceful transition of power. For the first time in 150 years the outgoing president skipped the ceremony. More than 80% of Mr Trumps supporters believe his damaging lie that the election was stolen.

And yet Mr Biden looks well suited to the work at hand. He assumes the presidency after nearly half a century in government. He is a conciliatory elder statesman who may serve only one term, not a culture warrior hellbent on securing re-election. His cadre of experienced appointees (see graphic) will immediately wield the tools of the administrative state to undo much of the damage of the Trump era. Harsh immigration policies will be lifted. The drive to weaken environmental protections will be reversed. European allies jittery about Americas commitment to mutual defence and combating climate change will be reassured.

More lasting change will require legislation. Both chambers of Congress are under Democratic control, albeit by the narrowest of margins. The Democrats hold the House of Representatives by just four seats. They will retain control of the Senatewhich is split equally between the two partiesthanks only to the deciding vote of Kamala Harris, the vice-president.

Marshalling enough support to pass serious reforms will be possible, but will require bipartisan negotiations and a ruthless mastery of the Senate last demonstrated by Lyndon Johnson. Any lone dissident Democratic senator, of left-leaning or conservative convictions, or a sufficiently large bloc of Democrats in the House (a squad of six, say) will be able to scuttle Mr Bidens proposals in the face of unified Republican opposition. The filibuster, a procedure which allows an obstreperous minority to block most laws unless 60 of the 100 senators vote otherwise, will almost certainly remain in place.

As a result, those on the left of the new presidents party are destined to be disappointed. During the Democratic primary Mr Biden rejected their most contentious proposals, including Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and defunding the police. Other sweeping ideas such as packing the Supreme Court with new justices or ditching the electoral college look impossible.

And yet Mr Bidens opposition to his partys most radical ideas has obscured the fact that he hopes to govern well to the left of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. His New Deal-esque agenda will retain populist economic ideas, such as minimum-wage increases, industrial policy and substantial government spending.

The early days of the administration will be dominated by legislation to contain covid-19 and further cushioning its economic fallout. The logic is clear. The proposals to build back better, as the new presidents team calls it, will address Americas most urgent crises. They may also attract Republican votes and should conserve Mr Bidens political capital for more fraught matters later on. That does not mean that they will be modest.

The first order of business, which Mr Biden outlined in a speech on January 14th, will be another covid-19 relief bill, costing $1.9trn. It would provide $160bn to pay for a national vaccine programme, expanded testing and contact-tracers. It would shovel more cash to Americans via cheques of $1,400 per person, increases in unemployment benefits and a temporarily enhanced child tax credit (a policy which would, almost on its own, halve poverty among children). Republicans may balk at the costtheir worries about the deficit and debt are noticeably more acute under Democratic presidentsor some of its provisions, such as increasing the national minimum wage to $15 an hour. But the proposal cannot be accused, as some of Mr Obamas were, of pre-emptive compromise.

Mr Bidens economic team has dubbed this bill a rescue measure. Hard on its heels will come a recovery bill, the details of which are yet to be unveiled. If the first foray into policymaking is any indication, it too will probably be a juggernaut. The recovery bill will propose massive infrastructure spending, perhaps the $2trn pledged in the campaign. It would also be the primary vehicle for some of Mr Bidens most ambitious climate-change pledges. Mr Biden has promised to ensure universal broadband access, spend $400bn on energy and climate research and create 10m new clean-energy jobs on the way to decarbonising the electricity sector by 2035 and the economy as a whole by 2050. The trillions proposed will also channel Mr Bidens neo-Rooseveltian instincts: he nostalgically aims for a domestic manufacturing renaissance powered by unionised workers.

These are opening, maximalist positions. They give a sense of the scale of Mr Bidens ambitions to exploit the crises he facesand the fractious state of Republicans fighting over the legacy of Trumpismto remake the American economy. They hint at his strategy for placating the left-wing gadflies of his party (who are also grudgingly thrilled at the diversity of his otherwise conventionally centrist appointees). Mr Biden seems to have grasped that unified control of government is a necessary but not sufficient condition for passing major legislation. Mr Clinton in 1993, Mr Obama in 2009 and Mr Trump in 2017 all came to Washington with the gift of an agreeable Congress. They squandered much of their political capital on trying to push through health-care legislation. Only Mr Obama succeeded.

One clich of American politics is that such legislative overreach produces the swing back to the opposition party typically seen during a presidents first mid-term elections. The last five presidents have lost on average 31 seats in the House of Representatives during these elections (and two in the Senate). For Mr Biden, that would spell the loss of both chambers, probably dooming the chances of any serious lawmaking for the final two years of his term.

Democrats have learned from the drubbing Mr Obama received in 2010. The issues that provoke deep partisan divisions and sap political capitalsuch as sweeping reforms of the immigration systemmay be introduced for debate in Congress but any serious action will probably have to wait.

Even with such caution and concerted whipping from party leaders, Mr Biden will have to work hard. He has two routes to success. The first would be to attract enough Republican supportten senators under the current configurationto neuter the threat of a filibuster. Some who remember the obstinacy of Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate under Mr Obama, think it is foolish to expect any differently of him or his caucus. But Mr Biden and his allies maintain a starry-eyed optimism for bipartisan dealmaking. If the Republicans will recognise this as a watershed moment for them, their party and our country, I think theres nothing we cant do together, says Chris Coons, a Democratic senator from Delaware.

Mr Trumps debasement of his party might be the deciding factor. A few moderate Republican senators most disaffected with Trumpismsuch as Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romneycould band with conservative Democrats to become the crucial negotiating bloc for all major legislation.

The alternative is reconciliation, a special procedure for passing an annual budget which cannot be filibustered and so could squeeze through with Democratic votes alone. But it has its limits. The rules for such bills are fiendishly complicated. Most importantly policy changes must be principallynot incidentallybudgetary, and cannot add to the deficit over the long run (usually ten years). Those restrictions create fiscal cliffs and lead to huge swings in future tax and spending. They also demand kludgey redrafting to ensure that they are mainly budgetary, says Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institution.

Much of Mr Bidens agendathe parts related to taxation and spendingcould be passed through reconciliation. The covid-relief cheques, the clean-energy investment plan, enhanced unemployment insurance and child tax credits look achievable. So does the promised repeal of many of Mr Trumps tax cuts. But other ambitious ideas may fall victim to internecine Democratic squabbles, including a carbon tax, lowering the Medicare eligibility age, expanding subsidies for child care, and some student-loan forgiveness.

Reconciliation is less useful for ideas that are principally regulatorysuch as a national minimum-wage rise or an ambitious clean-energy standard. It could not be used for other priorities of the left, such as immigration reform or new voting- and civil-rights legislation. In theory reconciliation can be used only for the annual budget. But since Republicans did not pass a budget resolution for the current fiscal year, the Biden administration will have two opportunities in quick succession to employ the procedure. One could be devoted to the rescue package and the other to the recovery package. If both become law, they could be the start of an unusually successful presidencyunmarred by the gridlock and frustration of the Obama era.

Mr Biden departs from Mr Obamas cerebral approach to legislating but he shares his view of the expansive powers of the administrative state. Within hours of his inauguration he signed a slew of executive orders signalling the end of the Trump era. The ban on travel from certain Muslim countries was rescinded. America will swiftly rejoin the Paris climate accord and World Health Organisation. The administration will organise a global climate-change summit. The drawn-out process of reversing Mr Trumps deregulations on emissions will begin, though these will probably be tied up in the courts for years.

Federal regulators will perk up. Under the former president, the Environmental Protection Agency was slow to enforce rules. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was effectively neutered. Both will pursue their mandates with new vigour. The broad powers already afforded to the Department of Justice to investigate police departments and civil-rights violations could provide a solid start to the current rather nebulous racial-justice agenda.

These domestic concerns will almost certainly dominate at least the first year of Mr Bidens presidency. Though he has taken a keen interest in foreign policy throughout his long career, it will take a back seatfor now at least. To be an effective global power, you have to be stable at home, says Nicholas Burns, a professor of diplomacy at Harvard. Mr Biden will not be able to ignore the demands of the rest of the world entirely. Most pressing will be restoring relations with allies in NATO and elsewhere after a frosty four years. An arms-control treaty with Russia expiring in February will force hasty negotiations. Plans will have to be made to fulfil Mr Bidens pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the biggest foreign-policy matter to loom over the Biden administration will be managing great-power competition with China. It worries me that weve got these two giant superpowers moving as if by remote control towards conflict, says Angus King, an independent senator from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats. Mr King believes that a stable, bipartisan consensus on the subject is within reach. This is a place where President Trumps instincts were correct. His implementation was wrong. The fact that China needed to be confronted, I think, was absolutely correct. Indeed, there is no indication when or even if Mr Biden would lift the tariffs put in place on Chinese goods. Unlike Mr Trumps fixation on bilateral trade deficits, these will instead be justified on grounds of human-rights abuse, theft of intellectual property and climate change.

The spectre of Mr Trump will linger. The new administration may have to get through his impeachment trialwhich would be the first to be held after a president has left office. Mr Biden, who has tried to stay above the partisan fray on the efforts, worries that a Senate engrossed in evidence against his predecessor for alleged high crimes will dally in confirming his nominees and debating his covid-relief package. Others disagree. I happen to think we can do two things at once, says Mr King, the senator from Maine. We can have, for example, hearings on nominations in the mornings and the trial in the afternoon. I dont think the trial is going to take as long as the prior one did. In fact, the jury in this case were all witnesses.

Whether or not Mr Trump is convicted, the damage done by his presidency is deep. Nearly 70% of American voters think members of the other party are a threat to the United States and its people; 50% conclude that they are downright evil. Such feelings predate Mr Trump and indeed created the conditions for his ascent. His innovation was to emphasise white grievance and add a dangerous strain of disbelief in the legitimacy of elections. Having shattered norms like the belief in democracy and the non-violent transition of power, Mr Trump cannot be counted on to adhere to the lesser professional courtesy of refraining from criticising his successor. He did not shy away from inflaming racial animus or culture wars while in office. It would be naive to expect more dignity having left it, as he eyes a comeback in 2024.

In his first inaugural address, as the Union fractured, Lincoln appealed to the better angels of Americans nature. His pleas could not prevent the worst conflict in American history. There are echoes of other moments of crisis in this transitionthe recession presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Mr Obama; the pandemic ignored by Woodrow Wilson; the racial strife under Dwight Eisenhower and Johnson. For a president to navigate any one of these crises would be gruelling. To navigate them all at once will be a formidable job. Yet that is Mr Bidens charge.

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This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "Good luck, Joe"

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Making America again - After the chaos of the Trump era, what can Joe Biden hope to achieve? | Briefing - The Economist