The steady opening months of Joe Biden’s presidency have been a stark departure from the tumultuous tenure of Donald Trump—but exactly how far we’ve come as a nation in nearly 100 days may not have fully set in until recently, when the right started freaking out about Biden trying to ban red meat as part of his climate plan. He’s doing no such thing, of course. But suddenly, Republicans got it in their heads that he was coming for their hamburgers, and began striking defiant poses promising to keep eating them. Donald Trump Jr. bragged that he punished his colon with four pounds of red meat in a single day. Greg Abbott warned that Biden would have to pry burgers from Texans’ warm, greasy hands. And Larry Kudlow, a former top adviser to Trump and current Fox Business host, went even further, suggesting that Biden wouldn’t rest until every American was a vegan.
“No burgers on July 4. No steaks on the barbecue...Get ready,” Kudlow said on Fox Business on Friday. “You can throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts and wave your American flag.”
No more beef-based beer? Thanks Biden!
The whole thing was a non-scandal. But there was still something telling about the brief beef dustup. Controversies like the War on Christmas or Barack Obama’s summer suit are only manufactured, after all, when there’s a lack of real controversy for the target’s opponents to latch onto. And for the conservative opponents of Joe Biden, there has simply not been much to credibly knock. He inherited the COVID crisis in the middle of a winter surge and a disorganized vaccine rollout; nearly 30% of the United States population, including more than half of American adults, has now had at least one shot, infections rates are dropping, and the prospect of some kind of normalcy seems ever closer. The country spent four years in a constant state of turmoil, at the whims of an unbalanced petty tyrant; Biden, by contrast, has been a steady, sober, and at times even soothing presence. That relative calm can sometimes obscure just how ambitious and progressive Biden’s agenda has been, having enacted a massive COVID relief package and is swinging for the fences on infrastructure, climate change, and criminal justice. But even Republican efforts to cast him as a Trojan horse for the far left haven’t quite worked, in no small part because his plans seem to be largely popular with the American people—even if they aren’t with Republicans on Capitol Hill.
“What can I say,” one Trump voter told Reuters, which found in a recent poll that more than half of the country approves of Biden’s job performance as he hits the 100-day mark and gives his first address to Congress this week. “He seems to be trying.”
More than half of Americans approve of Biden's at 100 days, which Reuters notes is “a level of support that his Republican predecessor Donald Trump never achieved.” Indeed, Trump’s approval rating hovered around 42 percent at the same point in his presidency, with an NBC poll conducted at the time finding that 64 percent of Americans considered the 45th president off to a poor or fair start. When it comes to handling the coronavirus crisis, Biden topped 60 percent approval in recent polls by NBC, CBS, and Washington Post/ABC, and according to Morning Consult, views of America from abroad have also become more favorable in recent months.
This is not to paint an overly rosy picture of the American political scene: Republicans remain bitterly opposed to Biden, and some, including on Capitol Hill, still can’t seem to accept or acknowledge his legitimacy. In state legislatures across the country, they are working to enact laws to severely limit voting, in hopes of taking back Congress in the midterms and the White House in 2024. Biden and the Democrats have been able to rack up some impressive accomplishments since taking power, but their efforts to address major issues like gun violence, global warming, and police brutality are sure to struggle as GOP lawmakers dig in their heels. That we now have a president who recognizes these problems and seems to care about finding solutions is a welcome change—but fixing what’s broken will be difficult and complicated, and his ability to do so, particularly with an uncooperative and unhinged Republican opposition, remains an open question. Already, he’s being tested by an influx of unaccompanied minors at the southern border—an issue that isn’t new, but that has seemed to vex the administration so far, and invited criticism not just from conservatives attacking him and Kamala Harris in bad faith, but from journalists who have complained that the White House has lacked transparency about the situation.
But Biden’s successes, both in the concrete (vaccine rollout) and in the abstract (America’s improved standing in the world), have so far overshadowed the areas where he’s stumbled or had more mixed results. He is governing with competence. There is, it turns out, quite an appetite in the country for that approach after four years of Trump’s nihilistic slapstick. For Republicans still trying to brand him a “disaster,” that’s meant not only exaggerating controversies—Biden doesn’t want to meet with Kevin McCarthy? The horror!—but inventing them out of whole cloth, as they did with Meatgate. One hundred days into Biden’s term, we’re not back to normal yet. But if the return of such nothingburgers are any indication, we must be getting closer.
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