All Joe Biden needs to do is slay the virus and free the economy

Democrats wanted a less white and less religious electorate. The 2020 election gave them the most diverse and secular America ever to go to the polls.

They wanted high turnout. Two of three eligible voters cast ballots, the highest proportion since 1900.

They wanted a damaged president who couldn’t coast on the economy. Coronavirus not only exposed the incumbent as inept, it wrecked the economy.

With so many stars aligned, folks were talking seismic shifts, blue waves and landslides. But the final score was less than earthshaking: an Electoral College win that 43,000 votes could have reversed, nine seats lost in the House (one New York seat is still contested) and, after the Georgia runoffs, a 50-50 Senate.

While the vice president’s tiebreaking vote will give Democrats an effective Senate majority, it won’t give them the free hand they expected from a wave election. Those who hoped to add new states or pack the Supreme Court will have to settle for less radical fare. And they’ll have to accept that four years of frenzied “resistance” – street marches, impeachment, the Kavanaugh hearings, the daily media battles – didn’t noticeably change voters’ minds about anything except Donald Trump.

Whatever its successes and failures, Joe Biden’s presidency will be an odd specimen. The 78-year-old has strongly hinted that he won’t seek a second term. One-term presidents aren’t rare, but those who plan on only one term are. America saw three of them – James K. Polk, James Buchanan and Rutherford B. Hayes – between 1845 and 1881. Biden will be the next.

His administration will work on an accelerated schedule. For two years it will do normal things like staffing agencies and pushing legislation. It will also inherit a crisis. (Sad to say, but after Barack Obama walked into one and George W. Bush got one within eight months, that doesn’t seem unusual.)

Then, as fast as you can say “midterms,” the Biden bunch will look, swim and quack like the lame ducks commonly seen after six years of White House combat. Their policy victories will mostly be behind them. Their opponents will likely control one or both sides of Congress. The president will ease into legacy preservation mode, the staff will begin tinkering with resumes, and the media will turn its attention to 2024.

Biden would need extraordinary and heretofore undiscovered political talents to achieve the FDR-sized presidency he talked about last spring in a span of four years. Luckily, voters didn’t ask for that. A nation yearning for a tidal wave of change doesn’t make its new leaders scavenge for Senate seats in January.

Give them change they can believe in, Joe. Slay the virus and free the economy. That’s all the mandate and all the legacy you’ll need.

Michael Smith is a freelance opinion writer in Georgetown.