President Joe Biden during the campaign said he was fighting “for the soul” of the country.
He promised to provide empathetic, kind, sane and inclusive leadership.
He has accomplished that through his effective expressions of shared grief and the emphatic denunciation of racism — including his heartfelt response to the guilty verdicts in the Derek Chauvin trial.
No other president has inherited such a daunting array of problems with such a slim congressional majority.
His appointments combine diversity with quality and experience, including a little-noticed slate of judges.
Perhaps pushed by the left, but without going too far, he’s set a surprisingly bold agenda and is not looking like the caretaker president we might have expected.
Biden has mostly ignored his disgraced predecessor and refused to rise to the culture-war bait dangled by right-wing media.
If anything, he has sometimes not been emphatic enough in denouncing Republicans who continue to fan the Big Lie about a stolen election, stir hysteria about immigrants or seek to apply a double standard to women of color.
One hundred days ago, if Biden had predicted that by now the vaccination rate would have hit 3 million a day, that more than 75 percent of those over 65 would have received at least one dose, and that it was already “open season” for every adult American to sign up, we would have said “wow.”
Biden has achieved the “wow.”
Far and away the most important economic development during Biden’s tenure is the accelerating pace of vaccination.
The virus is ultimately in charge of the economy, and the faster Americans can be protected from infection, the faster the economy will recover.
Less visibly, Biden has also set in motion some administrative actions that will reduce hunger and other economic hardship.
Biden’s decision on the Afghanistan troop withdrawal brings to an end America’s longest conflict.
On Russia, he has placed tighter sanctions and tried to rebuild ties to our European allies, again with the idea of creating a united front.
Asian partners surely appreciate the Biden team’s diplomatic competence and public support for alliances after four years of the opposite.
The secretary of state’s mantra to simultaneously cooperate, compete and confront is right, and even as Chinese leaders scolded Biden’s officials at their first meeting in Anchorage, the American diplomats held firm on U.S. values and interests.
To Biden’s credit, he has lowered the temperature of the national discourse and kept his promise to govern with an eye toward being a president “for all Americans.”
After Donald Trump, a majority wanted a different tone at the top.
Biden is delivering that.
And all the wings of his often-fractious party think he’s listening to them.
“Bidenism” is now a thing — and in its first 100 days it deserves an A.