By Amirah Yasmin
“Pop, Pop! We won!” was how 77-year-old President Elect Joe Biden received the news of his presidential victory; having a relaxed afternoon on the backyard patio with his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, when they heard applause from their grandchildren inside.
The family had been glued to the television eagerly waiting for the result of one of the most crucial presidential election races in American history. Not only that, the democratic candidate made history when the President Elect broke Obama’s record for receiving the most votes cast for a US Presidential Candidate. This was the result of a larger voter turnout throughout the United States.
Joe Biden’s win may be affected by the American goal to remove Trump from office and save the country from COVID-19 which has been long due. Many even admit that the former Vice President isn’t the best candidate to lead the United States in which Biden agreed.
However, he urged the public that comparison of competency should be exclusively limited to him and Donald Trump. “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative” is his favourite quote. Which again begs the question: do Americans vote Biden because he is Biden or because he is not Trump?
Regardless, a day without Trump is a day that deserves to be celebrated by American citizens who have practised their right to vote as a democracy. Sadly, Joe Biden’s victory was not witnessed by his first wife, Neilia Biden and daughter Naomi “Amy” Biden who were killed in a tragic car accident in 1972.
This carved the second-youngest elected Senate’s early political career as a single father struggling to process his wife and daughter’s deaths. In 2015, he lost another son, Beau Biden, who was fighting against brain cancer.
During his campaign, he posted a photo with his deceased son captioned “Beau Biden was not a loser” after the first presidential debate against Donald Trump. This was a response to Trump’s disrespect towards Biden’s sons, Beau and Hunter during the debate.
“I don’t know Beau, I know Hunter,” Trump interrupted Biden when he was talking about his deceased son’s military career as a counter-argument when Trump labelled the Americans who die in war as ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’. He then continued to criticise Hunter Biden’s drug problems in which Joe Biden responded that Hunter had fixed it and he was proud of his sons. In 2016, he bowed out from the Presidential Race to mourn the death of Beau.
Having to bury two children during his lifetime had really made Biden prioritise his family despite his busy schedule. His granddaughters shared this during the Democrat Convention which was conducted online. He would call and check on his family every day despite his crucial race for the 2020 election.
Besides that, his daily routine included a four-hour train ride from Delaware to Washington DC to make sure that he gets to spend quality family time and have dinner with them – even if it means sharing dessert before eating the actual meal.
When he was the Vice President in 2014, he sent a memo to his staff to remind them not to sacrifice any important family matters such as birthdays or even visiting an ill family member. According to him, if he found out that any of his staff missed any important family event because of work, he would be ultimately disappointed.
This human touch as a leader is seldom seen nowadays in the workaholic panorama of the world. Joe Biden’s empathy and fatherly qualities give him a good light and trust in leading the country to a better recovery.
I would like to take a moment and make something clear to everyone. I do not expect nor do I want any of you to miss or sacrifice important family obligations for work. Family obligations include but are not limited to family birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, any religious ceremonies such as first communions and bar mitzvahs, graduations, and times of need such as illness or a loss in the family. This is very important to me. In fact, I will go so far as to say that if I find out that you are working with me while missing important family responsibilities, it will disappoint me greatly. This has been an unwritten rule since my days in the Senate.
Memorandum to Staff of the Vice President, 7 November 2014
However, as any other individual in a high-ranked position, the President Elect has received a handful of criticisms, especially in his actions throughout his half a century political career. According to former Defence Secretary Robert Gates, the former Vice President hasn’t stopped being wrong in foreign policy for 40 years.
However, this statement was disagreed by the White House. For the record, Biden voted against the military mission to expel Saddam Hussein in 1991 and the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.
As for US troops in Afghanistan, Joe Biden believes that the invasion should only be limited to counter-terrorism. All these policy stances oppose the gist of American foreign policies relating to military interventions. Although it has been reported that Joe Biden has “learnt from his mistakes”, the question on which side receives his support is still unclear.
In his Presidential campaign, he has criticised Trump’s decision in moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. However, he has yet to announce any plan to reverse it. Instead, he explicitly shows his support for the UAE-Israel peace deal. At the same time, he has plans to end US support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.
Apart from that, Biden supports the returning of the nuclear deal with Iran that was initiated by the Obama administration which Trump withdrew. His stance in Afghanistan military intervention remains as he has plans to initiate peace talks with the Taliban. This also applies to the Iraq war as he has spoken against it.
As for the healthcare of American citizens, Bernie Sanders requested to the President Elect to lower the Medicare eligibility from 65 to 55. However, they agreed to only lower the age to 60.
Although he had shown public support to affordable healthcare which was built around Obamacare, Biden publicly opposed the initiative ‘Medicare for All’ which would make the government the main health insurance for Americans.
Despite his vague side to American access to healthcare, he supports the works to at least make healthcare more accessible which includes the negotiation of drug prices and the possibility to import drugs from other states in order to promote fairness.
When we talk about healthcare, we must discuss the President Elect’s projected policies for COVID-19 especially when he publicly announced after his victory that he wants to put COVID under control.
He had since proposed the mandatory wearing of face masks but he does not have the legal authority to imply such policy due to the structure of the American government. To make it up for the administrative loophole, Biden encourages state governors to enact policies to ensure people wear masks in public. Apart from that, he also proposed that families with children receive $250 to $300 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking of welfare assistance, Joe Biden has laid down plans to bridge the economic gap in the United States. This includes imposing higher taxes to wealthy Americans and corporations which had been expressed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who are well-known left-socialists.
These collected taxes would be used to channel more tax reliefs to middle-class families. Despite carrying Warren and Sander’s ideology, there have been reports that these two Senators will be frozen out of the Biden administration cabinet.
It is a common fact that Joe Biden is a centrist, not a socialist. This leads to conflicts among members of the party since they view the economy and public policies differently. Some may even say that if Biden is in another country such as England, he would have been a member of the conservative party rather than a liberal one which is what the Democrat is famously known as today.
The debate on whether Joe Biden is the progressive move for America or simply the lesser between two evils will constantly be debated. With the on-going problem-solution mismatch and conflicts within Democrats of different blocks, we will have to sit back and watch the performance of the President Elect’s term.
Nonetheless, American citizens and people worldwide must always hold the Biden administration accountable – one which Trump supporters lack. Either or, he has four years to prove that he is worth more than the last straw to restore the administrative sanity of the United States.***