May 2, 2021, 11:00 a.m. ET
Credit.Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
By Samuel Moyn
Mr. Moyn teaches constitutional law, international law and global history, and has written extensively on intellectual history in the 20th century and the history of human rights.
Enthusiasm for President Biden’s ambition is rampant among progressives. In the first 100 days of his presidency, he has inspired premonitions of thesecondcomingofFranklinRoosevelt. In his address to Congress last week, Mr. Biden himself invoked the parallel, “turning peril into possibility.”
And no wonder: After breaking through in the Democratic primaries as a centrist, Mr. Biden has surpassed his party’s expectations for the scale of his vision and moved sharply to the left in his early days in office.
1. He spent nearly a half-century in rehearsals.
If you want to assess Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first 100 days in office, it helps to wind back nearly 18,000 days to the beginning. When President Biden was first elected to the United States Senate, in Stone Age 1972, the country was still mired in Vietnam; the Watergate break-in that would tank the Nixon incumbency failed when bungling burglars dressed in business suits and surgical gloves were nabbed by members of the Capitol Police department’s “bum squad” (as their lookout sat in a motel across the street watching “Attack of the Puppet People”); and the first episode of “The Price is Right” was aired on CBS, hosted by Bob Barker.
Lame Duck Quarterback
Lame Duck most commonly refers to a sitting President Of The United States in the last year of his/her second term. I cannot fathom the discontent of the vocal majority of so called DEN fans who would rather have a lame duck QB drafted and sitting on the bench while Lock and Bridgewater duke it out with the most plausible outcome being for Lock to lead the Broncos this season and only slightly less plausibly to lead us to the playoffs. I can quote Von Miller: Lock is a rock star . George Paton and the DEN FO are not disagreeing.