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Trains were at the heart of the political scene this week. Internationally, President Joe Biden took a 10-hour train ride to get to Kyiv in person (which he must have thoroughly enjoyed, knowing his general love of trains). Domestically, the trainwreck in Ohio became sidetracked into a political circus.
We have to begin today with a look at the woes of the Republican Party. Because, when you think about it, why not?
The most amusing news (speaking from across the political aisle) all has to do with the Republican Party trying to come to grips with another presidential nominating process with Donald Trump as the 800-pound elephant in the room. Most of the party establishment would dearly love to see literally anyone else win the nomination than Trump, but they also fear the prospect of Trump going rogue if he doesn't win and launching his own third-party bid.
President Joe Biden achieved -- in public and on national television -- a seemingly-impossible feat this week, as he vocally unified all of Congress in support of the long-held Democratic goal of protecting Social Security and Medicare from having their budget slashed by Republicans. That was pretty astonishing to see, you have to admit, since Republicans have been attacking Social Security since before Joe Biden was born (which is really saying something, considering he's about as far from a spring chicken as you can get). But suddenly they decided en masse to take exception with this fact, and loudly protested when Biden pointed out what they've essentially been saying for decades and decades. So Biden welcomed them into the fold of politicians who do fight to preserve the safety net, gleefully proclaiming he had achieved "unanimity." This was a warning to the Republicans that the subject of cuts to Social Security and Medicare were now officially off the table. Rarely has so major a bit of political bargaining worked so effectively during a State Of The Union speech. Which is why it was all so astonishing to watch.
Next Tuesday night, President Joe Biden will deliver his State Of The Union speech to a joint session of Congress. Today, he got some good news he will without doubt be touting in this speech -- the unemployment rate is not just low, not just "lower than it ever hit under Donald Trump," but historically low. The last time the unemployment rate was a mere 3.4 percent was in 1969, before we sent any men to the moon. If it falls any further, we'll have to go back to 1953 to find a similar number. So we certainly expect this to be prominently featured next Tuesday night.
President Joe Biden gave a speech this week on the state of the American economy. On his watch, the economy has greatly improved as we all dug ourselves out of the pandemic recession together. So Biden deserves a victory lap. He also used the speech to draw a stark comparison between Democrats responsibly steering the economy and Republicans who apparently are salivating at the prospect of blowing it all up.
Two years ago today, Joseph Robinette Biden Junior was sworn in as the nation's 46th president. So how is he doing at his job? His approval rating in public opinion polls has generally improved since the midterm elections, hitting numbers he hasn't seen in a year. But those numbers are still south of 45 percent (on average), which is fairly common for a first-term president but certainly nothing to brag about.
Biden has had some notable successes as president, and some notable rocky patches as well. He entered office as the COVID-19 vaccines were becoming widely and freely available, and things seemed rosy on this front for his first year, only to get a lot grimmer as the Omicron strain hit much harder than any of the previous variants of the virus. All of a sudden we weren't done with COVID-19 and life didn't return to normal as expected. But since then, the virus has become almost an afterthought and didn't matter much to voters in the midterms (even though it had been predicted that it would be a major issue).
Biden's legislative accomplishments are more impressive than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson. True, Biden did have a Democratic Senate and House to work with, but both of those had historically-slender majorities -- L.B.J., for instance, had as many as 68 Democratic senators to work with. Biden only had 50 -- including two who loved the media spotlight so much they didn't care if they torpedoed Biden's agenda in major ways. Biden also managed to pass some major bills with bipartisan support, which is almost miraculous, these days.
With apologies to Frank Zappa, this week's big political story might be summed up as coming from "Joe's garage." But we'll get to all of that in a moment, down in the awards section (it shouldn't be any mystery which one he's going to get). First, though, let's take a look at the other momentous things that happened during the past week.
This column, of course, measures weeks from Friday afternoon to Friday afternoon. As we were writing last week, the House of Representatives was still deadlocked over who would become the next speaker. This continued far into the night, until Kevin McCarthy finally emerged victorious. Weakened, bloodied, diminished... but finally victorious.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez summed up the week better than anyone else, we thought, with her remark: "In chaos, anything is possible, especially in this era."
This is where we find ourselves on the fourth solid day of watching C-SPAN broadcasting what is normally a pretty sleepy affair: the vote to elect a new speaker of the House of Representatives. Normally, that is singular: "vote." We haven't had more than one vote in 100 years, in fact. But this week, we are already up to 13 votes, with the 14th scheduled (possibly, they could just adjourn again) for 10:00 Eastern time tonight. And nobody's sure if there is even an end in sight.
Welcome back to the second of our year-end awards columns! And if you missed it last Friday, go check out [Part 1] as well.
As always, this is long. Horrendously long. Insanely long. It takes a lot of stamina to read all the way to the end. You have been duly warned! But because it is so long, we certainly don't want to add any more here at the start, so let's just dive in, shall we?
Welcome to the first installment of our year-end awards!
As always, we must begin with a stern warning: this is an incredibly long article. So long you likely won't make it to the end, at least not in one sitting. It is, as it always is, a marathon not a sprint.