Jane Mayer and Evan Osnos on the Balance of Power at the Start of the Biden Administration

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

With Donald Trump rated the least popular President in the span of modern polling, President Biden might feel confident in claiming a mandate to advance his progressive agenda. Yet Democratic majorities in Congress are slim in the House of Representatives, and razor-thin in the Senate. That gives a small number of Democratic conservatives and moderate Republicans outsized influence over what legislation can pass. Senator Mitch McConnell, in a power-sharing arrangement with the Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, remains a force to be reckoned with. What will this balance of power mean for the new Administration? David Remnick poses this question to Jane Mayer, who has reported on McConnell’s tenure as a political operator, and to Evan Osnos, who covered Biden’s campaign and wrote a biography of the new President.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.9	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:13.3	This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
0:21.5	To restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words.
0:28.7	It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy.
0:33.7	Unity.
0:34.8	By temperament, unity, by experience, by political leaning in just about every way, I suppose, other than their age,
0:41.8	the last president and our new president are diametrical opposites.
0:46.8	It's hard to conceive of two men more different, and with Democrats controlling the White House
0:51.7	and the Congress for the first time in over a decade,
0:55.5	Joe Biden stands to make a huge imprint on American public life. His challenges are as obvious as
1:02.6	they are immense. The pandemic, a botched rollout of the vaccine, a struggling economy,
1:08.2	a demoralized federal government stripped of its expertise in many areas,
1:13.0	and a deeply divided nation. So where does he begin? The New Yorkers Evan Osnoses followed
1:19.9	Joe Biden extensively, and he wrote a biography that came out just before the election.
1:26.0	Evan, now we're talking on a Wednesday evening after a very strange and somber inauguration
1:32.1	of now President Biden.
1:34.7	What struck you about his inaugural address?
1:37.5	I was struck most by the theme of fragility.
1:40.9	I mean, this was not a moment for triumph, for, of course, a certain measure of
1:47.0	celebration, a sense of relief. But the image that he was projecting out to the country,
1:52.9	and it really does also reflect his own life, is this awareness of how easily things can slip away.
	...

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