washington | He has little taste for exercise, and yet it is through a press conference that Joe Biden will try on Wednesday to breathe new life into his presidency, on the eve of his first anniversary in the White House.
Giving a taste of this meeting scheduled for 9:00 p.m. GMT, his spokesperson Jen Psaki promised on Tuesday that from now on the American president would “talk more” about the successes achieved since his inauguration on January 20, 2021.
The 79-year-old Democrat needs to find a new lease of life. In the space of two months, he had to bury two emblematic promises, namely to renovate the welfare state and protect by a major law access to the vote for minorities, because of the too short parliamentary majority.
Joe Biden has a little over a month to correct his image as a president mired in disappointments: between Wednesday’s press conference and his State of the Union address, the traditional general policy address for presidents, scheduled for March 1 before Congress.
Afterwards, according to political commentators, it will be too late to hope to influence the mid-term legislative elections, scheduled for the fall, and which look bad for the Democratic Party.
On a strictly political level, Joe Biden has already hardened his tone against the Republican opposition and against his predecessor Donald Trump in two recent speeches.
And with regard to his record, the White House boasted on Tuesday on Twitter, with “before / after” tables in support, what Joe Biden has accomplished in terms of economic rebound and the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. 19.
“Historical”
She highlighted the “historic” progress in employment, with an unemployment rate now at 3.9%, against 6.4% a year ago.
On the health front, the Biden administration recalled that 74% of Americans were now fully vaccinated, compared to 1% when it took the reins.
The Democratic president also wants to provide after-sales service for two major pieces of legislation: an emergency recovery plan of 1.9 trillion dollars shortly after taking office, and more recently a historic investment of 1.2 trillion dollars in the America’s decrepit infrastructure.
And if Joe Biden had to bury his ambition for vast social reform, he can try before the summer to save scraps of it: his spokesperson reported discussions with parliamentarians to “lower health costs, and caring for older and younger alike. »
“America is on the move again,” Joe Biden said on Twitter on Tuesday. But he remains politically silted, with a confidence rating hovering around 42%.
Inflation and Omicron
If the economic statistics are impressive, the inflation is also spectacular, yet this is what worries Americans today.
And progress in vaccination or government efforts to address testing shortages can do little about the country’s immense pandemic fatigue, further compounded by the arrival of the Omicron variant.
Externally, where Joe Biden has promised that America is “back”, his fellow citizens hold the president responsible for a chaotic departure from Afghanistan and question his strategy in the face of the authoritarian regimes he has promised to challenge.
Starting with Russia, whose rhetoric and maneuvers regarding Ukraine have triggered a crisis not seen since the Cold War.
In an attempt to regain control, Joe Biden is therefore in a way violent, by giving a press conference in good and due form.
Unlike his predecessor Donald Trump, who poured out and railed profusely in the presence of journalists, the Democratic president has avoided prolonged interactions with the press since taking office.
Most of the time, he contents himself with answering, in a more or less pithy way, two or three questions shouted at him by the journalists when he gets off the plane, or at the end of a speech.
According to the University of California-Santa Barbara, Joe Biden will have held nine press conferences, against 22 for his predecessor during the first year of his mandate.