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The American president took stock of his first year in the White House during a press conference on Wednesday.
Joe Biden has a little over a month to correct his image as a president mired in disappointments: between the press conference of the day and his State of the Union address, the traditional general policy address for presidents, scheduled for March 1 before Congress.
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The United States has had a year of “challenges” but also of “progress”: Joe Biden on Wednesday tried to play down the crisis facing his presidency, blaming Americans’ frustration on the pandemic while touting his economic record .
“I know there is a lot of frustration and fatigue in this country,” the president acknowledged from the prestigious “East Room” of the White House during a rare and highly anticipated press conference, the day before. of the first anniversary of his taking office. While ruling out a change of political course, the American president promised to “go out more often” to meet Americans, warning that the fight against soaring prices would require a “long-term” effort.
Go out more often
“It has been a year of challenges but also a year of enormous progress,” said Mr. Biden, citing in particular the massive vaccination campaign against Covid-19. He pointed out that 75% of American adults were now fully immunized, up from 1% when his administration took over. The leader also boasted of “record job creation”, “record growth” with an unemployment rate now at 3.9%, against 6.4% a year ago.
But, on several occasions, he regretted not having gone into more contact with Americans, in particular with black voters, who had massively voted for him in the 2020 presidential election. “I will be on the ground a lot”, a- he assured. The 79-year-old Democrat needs to find new momentum. In the space of two months, he had to bury two emblematic promises, namely to renovate the welfare state and to protect by a major law access to the vote for minorities, because of the too short parliamentary majority.
Joe Biden blamed those failures on Republicans, acknowledging he hadn’t “anticipated” such a degree of opposition from conservatives to his plans. On several occasions, he has also challenged the Republicans on what their objectives were. Despite everything, the president promised on Wednesday to pass “large parts” of his vast social reform by splitting the 1,750 billion dollar plan into several investment projects, particularly in the environment and education.
“Painful” inflation
If the economic statistics are impressive, the inflation is also spectacular; and that is what worries Americans today. Fighting against this inflation, at its highest for almost 40 years, will require “a long-term effort”, he conceded. “And until then, it will be painful for a lot of people,” he said. Inheriting a country bruised by the Covid-19 pandemic, shaken by a historic protest movement against racism, Joe Biden felt that the country was still “far from being as unified as it should be”.
“The best days of this country are still ahead of us, not behind us,” he said. But he remains politically silted: a new Gallup poll places his popularity rating at just 40%, against 57% when he came to power. 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 speech, 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. His team pleads for patience, saying they are confident about the final results.
The president has also projected himself into the 2024 election, indicating that he would again choose his current vice-president, Kamala Harris, to be his running mate. Internationally Mr. Biden worried that a situation could “spin out of control” if Russia attacked Ukraine, warning Moscow of a “disaster” and “heavy” human losses in such a hypothesis. He said a summit with President Vladimir Putin was a “possibility”.
(AFP)