The Mess Biden Will Inherit

Donald Trump encouraged incoming members of his administration to consider his tenure as a TV show   -- a show which has turned out to be about fantasy. Take, for instance, his latest executive orders. Eugene Robinson writes:

The smoke-and-mirrors executive actions Trump signed this weekend are but the latest example. They don’t actually do anything concrete to help the millions of Americans thrown out of work by the pandemic, with the one exception of extending the moratorium on repayment of student loans, which is a good thing. Beyond that, Trump didn’t really forestall an expected wave of evictions; he just mandated a study of the issue. Trump didn’t really extend the $600-a-week federal supplement to unemployment benefits; he cut it to $300 and demanded that the states, which are basically broke, pony up an additional $100.

Behind the smoke and mirrors is carnage. And, if Biden wins, he will inherit that carnage. Most obviously, there is the wreckage of COVID:

Just look at the devastation and disgrace the United States has suffered. Other industrialized nations listened to their medical experts, shut down their economies comprehensively to drive infection rates to near zero, and then cautiously reopened. They have done so in fits and starts, with some setbacks and new closures, but most have been able to keep the virus at bay.

But here, in the nation that Ronald Reagan called a “shining city on a hill,” infection rates in most regions remain out of control. Europe has imposed a travel ban against Americans, who are deemed too likely to spark new outbreaks of disease. The developed world must see us as one of those “shithole countries” that Trump famously disdained.

Then there are the raw racial divisions which Trump has exploited:

Cities across the nation are still rocked by the Black Lives Matter protests over police violence and systemic racism. A police shooting in Chicago — which police have said was return fire toward a protester who shot at officers — sparked widespread damage and looting Sunday along the city’s glittering downtown Magnificent Mile. There were tense weekend protests in flash points such as Portland, Ore., and Louisville, as well as in smaller cities such as Asheville, N.C., and Stamford, Conn.

A president who put the well-being of the nation above politics would have sought to lead and guide the fractious national conversation we are having about race. Instead, Trump has made the moment into a confrontation between advocates of “LAW & ORDER” and demonstrators whom he calls “Marxists” and “anarchists.”

The federal government, through the Justice Department, could be aiding the process of police reform. Instead, through the Department of Homeland Security, it sent unidentified officers in unmarked vans to sweep up protesters in Portland and threatens other cities with similar treatment.

Should Joe Biden win, he will have to confront cascading crises. He will have his work cut out form him -- because, as Mark Antony said, "the evil men do lives after them."

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