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President Joe Biden starts to execute on policies Trump abandoned by crossing off another campaign promise
Trump talked big. Biden does big.
4/15/21
President Joe Biden is carrying out some of Donald Trump's biggest campaign promises by leaving America's longest war, targeting economic aid at forgotten Americans and building an infrastructure plan that may actually happen. The current White House is, of course, a sharp political and behavioral reaction to the previous one. And Biden is never going to finish his predecessor's border wall, berate allies or set a mob on the US Capitol. But the 45th and 46th presidents do share an understanding of several key economic and societal forces driving modern life outside Washington. And both, in different ways, shaped their appeal by convincing ordinary Americans who feel left behind that they were committed to working for them. With his new vow Wednesday to get troops home from Afghanistan and his big legislative proposals that elevate the working class, including a $2 trillion infrastructure bill, Biden is eying achievements his predecessor talked up but failed to accomplish. Biden, like Trump and President Barack Obama before him, ran for office on a platform of extricating Americans from quagmires, spending the trillions such wars cost here at home and restoring economic fairness. While the previous two presidents made progress in various ways toward those goals, the current commander-in-chief has put them at the heart of everything he does.
But so far, Biden is not being distracted. Indeed he is turning his plans to beat the pandemic into a double purposed quest to lift up everyday Americans -- one reason why his $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan was quite popular with Republican voters, if not their representatives. And he and national security adviser Jake Sullivan envisage a foreign policy built around the needs of US workers -- Americans First, rather than Trump's "America First" philosophy. Biden never demeaned the lives that were lost in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, but -- like Trump -- he argued in his own way that those "forever wars" distracted from more pressing issues at home. On the campaign trail in 2020, he often noted with pride that he had argued againstObama's surge of troops to Afghanistan in favor of a smaller, more nimble footprint focused on counterterrorism. "We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago. That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021," Biden said. A majority of Americans agree with Biden's sentiments. So far, the difference between the last administration and this one has been the ability to execute.
Trump talked big. Biden does big.