A CHANCE TO RESET
WHEN JOSEPH ROBINETTE BIDEN JR is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on January 20, 2021, he will be 78 years of age, already the oldest ever leader to hold that office. He will also have the distinction of winning the highest number of popular votes in the US presidential elections, ahead of even Barack Obama. Not bad for a former vice-president who was regarded as a has-been till he overtook the Democratic party’s frontrunners in the primaries to win the nomination. He then went on to win the presidency, defeating incumbent Donald Trump who had scornfully dismissed him as ‘Sleepy Joe’.
On the flip side, Biden will be leading a country that is deeply divided and polarised by the vote itself, and along more enduring fault-lines of race, class and geography. This at a time when the global Covid-19 pandemic has hit America the hardest with 9.5 million cases and 234,000 deaths as of November 5. It has already severely diminished the country’s economy, rendering over 20 million people jobless—a catastrophe that invites comparison with the Great Depression. Worse, Trump’s boast to ‘Make America Great Again’ has been reduced to ‘America Alone’. He quarrelled with America’s trusted allies, broke away from treaties and agreements, declined to be the global super-cop and conducted a disruptive, tweet-driven diplomacy that has considerably undermined the status and stature of the world’s premier power. And all this while the coronavirus crisis has accelerated the process of de-globalisation the world over, increasing isolation and eroding individual liberties and freedoms.
So, Biden’s task for the next four years is pretty much cut out. But is he up to it? And what does his presidency mean for India and the world?
SOUTH BLOCK WILL BE RELIEVED THAT IT WILL NO LONGER HAVE TO DEAL WITH TRUMP’S YO-YO DIPLOMACY. BIDEN WILL BE LESS VOLATILE AND MORE CONSISTENT
SAVING HOME
The answers to these questions lie in the forces that propelled Biden to the presidency. Before the elections, America faced what experts called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: the pandemic and the physical toll it took on Americans,
