Biden ran on competence. A slew of challenges are testing that promise.

The contrast was meant to be sharp: a seasoned Washington veteran replacing a president who arrived a political novice and was voted out after one tumultuous term. 

Joe Biden’s campaign watchwords – competence, experience, empathy – applied both to himself and to the team he would bring in. But since Inauguration Day, one challenge after another has tested the new president and his administration in ways both foreseen and unimagined, denting the reputation of a man who took office amid high hopes.

A summer COVID-19 surge fueled by the delta variant dashed expectations of a return to quasi-normality, laying bare the limits of government. A different surge – of migrants at the southern U.S. border – has also put the Biden team on the defensive. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack last spring, disrupting access to fuel up and down the East Coast, found the nation’s cybersecurity apparatus wanting. 

And following the United States’ chaotic, deadly exit from Afghanistan, President