Call it true irony. The man who had a book ghost-written for him called "The Art Of The Deal" could never actually manage to strike any kind of deal. So the man who replaced him ran on his own dealmaking skills, in a time where pretty much everyone in Washington considered the idea too old-fashioned to ever work. But President Joe Biden just got his first big deal, this week. A bipartisan infrastructure plan is now going to move forward in the United States Senate and has what can only be called a better-than-average chance of passing.

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After months of breathless anticipation, a path forward hove into sight. The legislative endgame for a major portion of President Joe Biden's agenda is now in view. And -- surprise! -- it looks like a bipartisan infrastructure deal will actually be a part of it. I fully admit I was wrong about this one, because I have been cynically calling the entire negotiating process Kabuki theater and I would have put the odds of failure much higher than the odds of success. But today, Biden publicly appeared with the Republicans who have been negotiating with him and the Democrats, and he formally put his seal of approval on the last-ditch offer the Republicans just made. By doing so, Biden opens the door to having two successful bills arrive on his desk, one with 10 or more Republican senators' votes and the other passed on strictly partisan lines. As I've been saying all along, the American people just do not care about the process, so this whole exercise was pretty pointless, to me, but it now at least it looks like it's going to be successful.

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I just read one of the most hopeful articles I think I've ever read about the Democratic Party. Nancy Pelosi and the White House are making a huge push to get all Democrats to get out there and toot their own horns. This really shouldn't be all that amazing -- it shouldn't even be news because it should be so routine -- but it really is, since Democrats have long been particularly bad in this regard. Republicans know how to settle on one songbook and then endlessly sing the same thing from it -- for just weeks on end. But Democrats have never had that singular focus, which is part of the reason why I became a blogger in the first place (in the hopes that they would, eventually).

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Dianne Feinstein was born in 1933. She was 11 years old (two months' shy of turning 12) before any president in her lifetime was not named "Franklin Delano Roosevelt." She was not a baby boomer, she was a Great Depression baby. She probably grew up listening to F.D.R.'s fireside chats on the family radio. Not television, mind you, radio. That's how old she is.

When Feinstein was born, there were only 20 amendments to the U.S. Constitution (there are now 27). Her mother was four months pregnant with her when the most recent amendment had been added, which changed the date of the presidential inauguration from March 4 to January 20. Prohibition was still in effect when Feinstein was born, but (ironically) under federal law "marihuana" was still legal. The first drive-in movie theater opened the same month as her birth. At the end of 1933, FM radio received a patent. That was the world Dianne Feinstein was born into.

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To an outsider, what is happening in Washington right now is splitting hairs for no particular reason. It won't matter to the public one whit whether what Congress passes to advance President Joe Biden's agenda is in one bill or two, or whether any Republicans vote for any part of it. The public is really only interested in results: "Did you get anything done? Are they things that will help me out?" That's it. And pretty much everything being discussed is wildly popular, proposal by proposal, so the public's going to support and enjoy seeing these programs implemented or expanded no matter what the vote count in the Senate or the House winds up being. Joe and Jane Public just do not care about any of that.

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President Joe Biden had a pretty good week all around. He began the week in Europe, where he met with the leaders of NATO, the European Union, the G7, a few royals (just to mix things up), and Vladimir Putin. That's a pretty packed schedule, but Biden seemed to manage just fine. The Europeans were both visibly thrilled and massively relieved to be visited by a United States president who was, once again, a sane adult (and not a petulant little child-man). They heaped praise upon Biden -- mostly just for being "President Not-Trump." You may laugh, but please recall President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize solely for being "President Not-Dubya," years earlier. But more seriously, Europe announced some deals with Biden (including, notably, a truce being called on the subsidy war over Boeing and Airbus airplanes). Not only were personal relationships either reaffirmed or begun, tangible diplomatic progress was made. Europe stood as one with the United States over the contentious issues of Russia and China, which only strengthened Biden's position for his meeting with Putin. The Putin summit didn't produce a whole lot in the way of tangible deliverables, but then again it didn't produce an American president willing to believe Russia's ex-K.G.B. leader over his own intelligence services either, so it has to be chalked up as a major improvement. Throughout it all, Biden stuck to one very simple slogan that summed up what his trip was supposed to be showcasing to the world: "America is back."

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This has been an extraordinary week. I say that because things seem to actually be happening in Washington, which is (to put it politely) not the normal state of affairs at all. Congress even proved that, on occasion, they could move with blinding speed, as they passed a bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday in a matter of days, instead of the usual "months, if not years." President Joe Biden has already signed the law, long before most Americans were even aware of its existence. The federal workforce will get to take tomorrow off, which just wasn't true at the beginning of the week, or even yesterday. It's long been a closely-held secret, but Congress can act this quickly, when they really want to.

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The two most powerful men on Capitol Hill should really sit down and have a talk with each other. It'd be risky, but maybe it's the only way the situation could improve. Senator Joe Manchin should invite Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to lunch, and the two should spend the entire time talking about the concept of bipartisanship. Of course, the risk involved in this strategy would be if McConnell instead actually talked Manchin into switching parties (which has to be considered a real possibility, at this point). But the benefit could be Manchin coming to a new understanding of how there just is never going to be any bipartisanship on the budget, on voting rights, on the 1/6 commission, or on just about anything else of any importance at all.

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President Biden is currently in Europe, in the midst of his first trip abroad since he took office. So the folks at Pew Research decided it was a good time to see how America is now viewed by the rest of the world (or the countries with advanced economies that were surveyed, at any rate). The answers are exactly what you'd expect them to be -- America's standing in the world has dramatically improved, now that a sane adult is in charge of the country once again (instead of an unstable and temperamental toddler).

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Progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders have been pushing for a national $15-an-hour minimum wage for quite some time now. So far, they have been unsuccessful, due both to the Senate filibuster and to corporatist Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin (who, the last time the subject came up, would only even consider raising the minimum wage to $11 per hour). But the natural forces of the marketplace seem to be forcing employers towards this goal anyway, now that they're finding it so tough to hire workers. This shouldn't be all that surprising, because it is basic supply and demand. When the demand (for workers) is high and the supply is low (fewer people returning to work), then the marketplace will do what it always does when the formula is applied to merchandise: prices will rise. Or, in this case, "wages," not prices.

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