Biden entered office facing daunting crises - only to be hit with more crises

In his third run for president, Joe Biden's pitch to Americans was simple: after half a century in elected office, including eight years as vice-president, he understood the demands of what is arguably the hardest job in the world. It was a point Biden stressed on the campaign trail, in his own folksy way: "Everything landed on the president's desk but locusts."

Nearly a year and a half into his presidency, Biden now appraises his own fortunes differently. "I used to say in Barack's administration: 'Everything landed on his desk but locusts,'" he told Democratic donors in Oregon. "Well, they landed on my desk."

Successive mass shootings, including a racist attack at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and a massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 elementary school students and their teachers dead, present just the latest test for a president desperate to act but constrained, once again, by the limits of his own power.

"Enough. Enough," Biden repeated in a rare primetime address to the nation, pleading with Congress to honor the communities shattered by mass shootings by finally tightening the nation's gun laws. He called for a ban on assault-style weapons and lifting legal immunity for gun manufacturers. With razor-thin Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Biden does not have the votes to move his legislative agenda without consensus.

"I just told you what I'd do," he said. "The question now is: what will the Congress do?

Biden inherited a nation in tumult, plagued by disease and division and still reeling from the bloody insurrection at the US Capitol. In his inaugural address, he said the country faced a "historic moment of crisis and challenge" and identified four national trials that he vowed to confront: the pandemic, the ensuing economic downturn, racial injustice and climate change.

Though his administration has made varying degrees of progress on each, those issues remain unresolved while the list of unforeseen challenges demanding the president's attention grows ever longer.

Inflation has surged to its highest level in nearly four decades, leaving American families struggling to afford the basic necessities like groceries, gas and rent. Russia's invasion of Ukraine threatens the liberal world order, while pushing the cost of food and fuel even higher.

A shortage of baby formula, caused by the closure of a major manufacturing plant due to contamination, has become so dire that Biden has invoked wartime powers to speed up production and restock shelves. And any moment now, the supreme court is expected to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion, leaving tens of millions of American women without access to the procedure.

The confluence of high-stakes events has left Americans deeply pessimistic about the direction of the country and frustrated with their leaders in Washington. The pandemic, which has now claimed more than 1 million American lives, warnings of an economic "hurricane" and a stalled legislative agenda have only deepened public dissatisfaction, including among Biden's supporters.

"Biden came into office facing arguably the most daunting challenges since FDR, between the pandemic and the economy and global warming and racial justice, only to then be hit by an almost-perfect storm of crises with inflation and Ukraine and the supply chain and baby formula," said Chris Whipple, author of the forthcoming book, The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House.

"He's been dealt an extraordinarily bad hand."

Leon Panetta, a former CIA director and defense secretary under Barack Obama and a former White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton, agreed.

"In my over 50 years of public life, I've never seen as many critical crises taking place as we've seen in these last few years," he said.

Republican opposition, the courts and a host of new troubles have thwarted many of the president's most ambitious goals, leaving the administration struggling to respond to the many domestic concerns. The predicament threatens a central promise of the Biden presidency: "I got elected to solve problems," he told reporters in March 2021.

The White House has been working to rebuild public confidence in Biden's leadership since America's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August. The devastating end to America's longest war, in which 13 US service-members and scores of Afghans died, marked a precipitous decline of the president's approval ratings which now hover at around 40%. Satisfaction with his stewardship of the economy is even lower.

As the challenges mount, Biden has become increasingly frank about the constraints on his presidency while Republicans accuse him of shirking responsibility.

Speaking to reporters after a virtual roundtable with infant formula manufacturers last week, Biden said the administration couldn't simply "click a switch" to bring down the cost of gas or food. Despite airlifts of formula from abroad, he predicted the formula shortage would persist for another two months and then revealed he wasn't made aware of the crisis until April. The admission raised new questions about why an administration composed of Washington veterans was so slow to recognize the problem.

When pressed to explain the administration's response, the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, pointed to the cascade of challenges Biden faced.

"The president has multiple issues - crises - at the moment," she said. "When he walked into the administration, he talked about the multiple crises that we needed to deal with as a country - so that's number one to remember."

Panetta said the White House had a positive story to tell about American resilience in the face of extraordinary hardship but has done a "lousy" job of sharing its vision to the public. In the vacuum, he said the White House is left scrambling to respond.

Since taking office, Biden has had a number of hard-won victories, largely eclipsed by anxiety over inflation and rising costs.

Congress passed a $1.9tn Covid-19 relief package that slashed poverty and sent him a $1.2tn infrastructure package approved with bipartisan support. The administration's mass vaccination campaign has resulted in nearly 67% of Americans being fully immunized against Covid-19, with shots for children younger than five potentially available within the coming weeks. He filled a record number of federal judicial vacancies during his first year and successfully nominated the first Black woman to supreme court justice.

Meanwhile, the economy continues to grow, with unemployment at record lows and consumer spending robust. On Friday, it was reported that 390,000 more jobs were created.

"Biden has done a very good job with things over which he can use the levers of the presidency and the levers of the government to do it," Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said, noting the consequential exception of the Afghanistan exit. "But there are many things happening now where there simply are no levers."

The tools for combating inflation - voters' top priority - rest largely with the Fed, not the president. Still, rising costs have become a major political liability for Biden ahead of the November elections, as the administration faces sharp criticism for wrongly predicting inflation would probably be "transitory".

Biden has sought to blame Russian president Vladimir Putin for exacerbating inflation and new lockdowns in China, as well as Republicans for blocking his domestic policy agenda, which he has said would ease the financial burden on American families.

"All presidents suffer a decline in their popularity midway through their first term and it's often due to the fact that they cannot deliver on all of the promises that they make," said Todd Belt, the director of the political management program at the George Washington University and co-author of The Post-Heroic Presidency. "This is particularly acute for Biden because he did make a lot of promises and he hasn't been able to follow through on them."

Even when the president is powerless to act unilaterally, Belt added, "he at least has to look like he's trying".

Democrats, with their slim control of Congress at risk, have grown frustrated with the president.

Progressives want to see him throw all his energy and political capital into issues like climate change, votings rights, immigration and abortion - and where this fails to push for rule-changes in the Senate to overcome Republican opposition. They also want to see him take more executive action, like on student-debt forgiveness. Meanwhile, many moderates in his party are upset that he promised bipartisanship and then put forward proposals that failed to win over their most conservative members, much less a single Republican.

Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, said Biden must continue to "lead and communicate directly with the American people".

"Congress is broken," Brazile wrote in an email, "and Biden doesn't have a big majority in either chamber, so it's vital that he builds out and not just clamor inside."

Biden has received widespread praise for rallying Nato allies in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It was perhaps the most consequential act of his presidency, said Whipple, the author.

"Almost unquestionably, Joe Biden's presidency is going to be defined by Ukraine and by how well he defends democracy against autocracy in its moment of danger with an invasion in the heart of Europe," he said.

But in the short term and at home - which is where most voters' concerns lie - Biden's handling of Ukraine has done little to improve his approval ratings or increase the likelihood of Democrats keeping control of Congress. And last week Biden warned that Russia's blockade of Ukrainian ports could raise the cost of staples like bread even more.

"I understand that families who are struggling probably don't care why the prices are up - they just want them to go down," Biden conceded in a speech on Friday.

He couldn't promise that inflation would recede, only that he would try his best to make it happen.

"As your president," he said, "I remain committed to doing everything in my power to blunt the impact on American families."