The Biden Presidency, Year One

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Biden took the oath of office in a moment of deep crisis—the pandemic in full swing and just weeks after an unprecedented attempt to overturn the election by violence. Merely a return to normalcy would have been a tall order. But Biden was promising something more: a transformational agenda that would realign American economics and life on a scale rivalling Franklin Roosevelt’s long Presidency. Yet Biden never commanded Roosevelt’s indomitable popularity and electoral advantages. A year into the Administration, Evan Osnos takes stock of its successes, failures, and ongoing challenges, along with four New Yorker colleagues: Susan B. Glasser on legislation, Jonathan Blitzer on immigration, Elizabeth Kolbert on climate, and John Cassidy on the economy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and the New Yorker.
0:12.0	Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.
0:15.3	In 2020, in the presidential campaign, Joe Biden managed to unify the Democrats behind
0:20.4	him as a reassuring figure in the center of the party.
0:24.6	And at the very same time, he put forward one of the most progressive and transformational
0:29.1	agendas ever seen in modern Washington.
0:32.7	And now a year in, it's time to take stock of the successes and the failures of this
0:36.9	administration.
0:37.9	I'm going to turn things over now to Staff Rider Evan Osnos, who reports from Washington.
0:43.6	Evan covered Joe Biden's campaign, and more recently, he profiled West Virginia's
0:48.1	Joe Manchin.
0:49.1	Perhaps the second most powerful person in Washington right now.
0:53.3	Here's Evan Osnos.
0:55.6	When Joe Biden came into office, it was a moment of extraordinary turmoil.
0:59.7	It was just two weeks since the violence of January 6th.
1:04.0	And under those circumstances, just a return to normalcy would have been challenging,
1:08.5	but he had all along been promising something more.
1:13.0	I covered his campaign, and over the course of it, Biden began to talk in larger and larger
1:17.9	terms about what was possible, the sense that the only way to push back Trumpism was for
1:24.0	Democrats to go big economically and politically.
1:28.1	There was something incredibly ambitious about that vision, and I think to some it seemed
1:32.7	impossible to others.
	...

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