It appears to be quite possible that the Covid situation in the United States will get worse again.
(That’s due both to 1) the emergence of new, more threatening variants and 2) the persistence of too large a proportion of Americans refusing to get vaccinated. These two combine: The lack of vaccination gives the virus more time to evolve more variants that are more transmissible and/or more damaging or fatal.)
If there is such a reversal – if the present period of relative openness and safety turns out to be a good interval between two bad stretches – that will pose a political danger to President Biden:
- Biden has enjoyed very high approval from the American people for his handling of the pandemic, and that seems to be a major mainstay of his overall good popularity with the American people.
- If things get worse again, with disruptions and restrictions all over again, Biden stands now to pay a political price: Even though it’s not Biden’s fault that so many Trump-supporters won’t get vaccinated, Biden will be blamed for things going bad.
As things now stand, the danger is that too many of those people whose changing leanings decide presidential popularity and election outcomes will think, “Biden failed.”
But there’s something that Biden can to do now to protect himself from the political peril into which the anti-vaxxers are placing him. And that’s to make a speech to the nation – one of those nationally televised messages from the President to the American people -- about the importance of more Americans getting vaccinated.
Whether or not such a speech might or might not induce more Americans to get vaccinated, that kind of attention-getting presidential address could serve to inoculate Biden against being held responsible for a worsening situation.
The first point to be made is that it would be entirely appropriate for a President to deliver that kind of nationally-televised speech to the American people on such a subject. When the nation is facing a crisis in which it is important that the nation rally together to protect itself, it is entirely fitting for a President to address the nation.
This kind of “speech to the nation” is as appropriate to deliver in the face of this pandemic as it would be in wartime: both situations call for leadership to talk to the people about what is required of us to deal successfully with a major threat to our security.
President Biden might talk to the nation, in such a context, about how it is each person’s patriotic duty to get vaccinated.Just as in World War II, everybody needs to do their part for the nation to be victorious against a deadly enemy. (We need to be unified in purpose to achieve the “herd immunity” that will defeat the virus.)
If he wished to, President Biden could also utilize such a speech to venture new ideas/policies.
- E.g. any proposals he might have to help curb the spread of misinformation (through Facebook, and otherwise);
- E.g. something along the lines of what the French are evidently doing to good effect, which is to say to the citizenry, “No one will force you to get vaccinated, but no one who is not vaccinated will be admitted to soccer games, and other potential “spreader” events.” (Evidently, that has produced a new surge in the vaccination rate.)
But the main thing the speech can do is to frame any potential future worsening of the pandemic in a way that inoculates Biden against blame.
That speech could be crafted with that purpose in mind: so that if things go bad, people will not think, “Biden failed us” but rather will think, “Biden warned us.”
Remembering Biden’s exhortation to the unvaccinated to do their patriotic duty, people will be more likely to place the blame where it belongs—on the unvaccinated, and on those Republican politicians (from Trump on down) who have consistently weakened America in the face of this pandemic by making a political battle out of an issue that should have been beyond politics.
(If the 2022 Election is held under worsened pandemic conditions, it will matter greatly who the majority of the public blames.)
The pandemic is, of course, a huge issue. But the necessity of protecting Biden politically is important for reasons that go far beyond even the pandemic.
The battle to preserve our democracy against a rising fascist/authoritarian force is even more vital, and Biden’s standing with the American people is one of those factors that will be central to the outcome of that battle. And so also does Biden’s standing matter with respect to all the other issues, where Biden’s agenda comes up against Republican obstructionism (climate change, etc.)