Do Hope and History Rhyme? Assessing Biden’s First Year

It’s been a hard year since January 20, 2021, the day Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46^th POTUS—and it has been a harder year for him than for most of us. What can be said, fairly and honestly, in assessment of Biden’s first year in the White House? 

1/7/22 image by Mandel Ngan

Biden’s Quote from Seamus Heaney

The President is said to be five-eighths Irish and has spoken frequently of his family ties to Ireland. He also likes Irish poets, especially Seamus Heaney (1939~2013), who was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

In his inaugural speech a year ago today, the new President cited these words from Heaney’s poem “The Cure of Troy”:

History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave…
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

These are memorable words, and Biden quoted them with great sincerity (and you can hear him read those words here), but one year later it seems as though the hopes of the President are far from rhyming with history now.

Biden’s Hard Year

As is true of each new President, except perhaps for #45, they start their term in office with high hopes for what they want to accomplish for the good of the nation. But those hopes are seldom realized (thus, history says, Don’t hope).

Perhaps the last President to have come close to realizing his inaugural hopes was FDR. Especially during the first two terms of his presidency (1933~1941), hope and history did rhyme to a large extent.

Roosevelt’s third inaugural address, though, delivered 80 years to the day before Biden’s address last year, was a lifetime ago. Few remember those remarks stressing America’s obligation to take action during the international crisis. Those next 4+ years were especially hard for FDR.

But for Biden, the first year has been a hard one:

* The covid-19 pandemic, with its new variants and the widespread refusal of being vaccinated, worsened instead of dissipating.

* Largely related to disruptions caused by covid-19, inflation grew rapidly and consumer prices increased perceptibly.

* Because of the intransigence of all 50 Republican and of two Democratic Senators, a democracy-protecting voting rights bill and an expansive infrastructure bill both failed to gain the support necessary for enactment.

* The events surrounding the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan were widely criticized as Biden’s debacle.

* The Jan. 15 issue of The Economist states that Biden is “almost the most unpopular president since records began” (only Trump “rated worse” at the same point in his term). Accordingly, “a mid-terms shellacking for his party looks highly probable.”

Biden’s Hope in the Year(s) Ahead

One year doesn’t make or break a presidency. In spite of the setbacks and disappointments, there are first-year accomplishments that the President and his party can legitimately accentuate in the year ahead.

* The early rollout of vaccines was highly successful. (It was certainly not Biden’s fault that so many people, mostly Republicans, refused to get vaccinated—or that new variants, delta and then omicron, developed.)

* Early in his tenure Biden also won passage for a roughly $2 trillion stimulus package and followed that with enactment of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill with bipartisan support.

* Also, as Heather Cox Richardson points out, last February the jobless rate was 6.2%; today it has dropped to 4.2%. This means the Biden administration has created 4.1 million jobs, more than were created in the 12 years of the Trump and George W. Bush administrations combined.**

* Further, according to a 12/20/21 Bloomberg News article, “America’s economy improved more in Joe Biden's first 12 months than any president during the past 50 years . . . “ The S&P 500 gained 26.9% and Dow Jones gained 18.7% in 2021.

Perhaps if the President stays the course and “soldiers on,” as James Carville admonished him to do this week on Meet the Press, the longed-for tidal wave of justice will yet rise up, and hope and history will begin to rhyme more and more.

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** This, and much more about Biden’s first year accomplishments, is found in Richardson’s 12/22/21 “letter” (see here).