Max Boot, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, on Tuesday laid bare the stark differences between the first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration and that of his predecessor, ex-President Donald Trump.
In an essay titled “Trump’s first 100 days were sheer craziness. Biden’s are sheer competence,” Boot said that Biden, whose White House will reach the landmark day on Friday, had “an unbeatable advantage” in the sheer fact that he is not Trump.
“Simply by not inciting his supporters to attack the Capitol and not telling them to take hydroxychloroquine, President Biden looks infinitely better than his predecessor,” said Boot, who quit the GOP in 2016 upon Trump’s takeover of the party.
The columnist then argued why Biden is more than just the anti-Trump ― pointing out his scandal-free first months in office; his pick of well-qualified appointees instead of relatives and far-right extremists; and reassertion of America as a key player on the global stage.
“Biden hasn’t gotten everything right,” Boot acknowledged, citing the president’s “pullout from Afghanistan,” his “unwillingness to rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership” and his “hesitancy to raise refugee admissions” as what he considered to be errors.
“But you have to give Biden credit: He is actually trying to do his job rather than simply drawing attention to himself,” Boot concluded. “That is something we once could take for granted. Now we have to be grateful that we no longer have to wake up every day wondering what crazy, damn fool thing the president just said.”