Right now, the administration is conducting a massive operation in Kabul that has resulted in the evacuation of 50,000 people in eight days. It is also overseeing a life and death battle against COVID that has already resulted in over 200,000,000 Americans receiving the vaccine.
It is also in the midst of negotiations in support of the passage of a vitally needed $1 trillion infrastructure bill, the biggest the US has passed in decades. It is also, at the same time on Capitol Hill involved in negotiations to pass a $3.5 trillion budget package.
Taken together these two congressional initiatives would lead to the biggest investment America has made in itself and in projects vital to our national security and well-being in more than half a century.
Last night, the Vice President of the United States gave a stirring and effective speech in Asia underscoring America's resolve to stand up to Chinese abuses and threats and to lead in the face of competition from a rising China.
Hours before, the president made an address announcing the approval by the FDA of the Pfizer vaccine and urging people to receive the vaccine despite an organized disinformation campaign from the GOP that is leading to widespread death & suffering.
The Department of Justice is working on hundreds of cases related to the attempted coup against the United States government on January 6th while actively conducting programs to reduce the future risk of domestic violent extremism.
DoJ has also made it a priority to combat a nationwide voter suppression campaign by the GOP and abuses in the country's police departments. Elsewhere the government has mounted an unprecedented campaign to battle the climate crisis, its consequences and to undo...
...widespread efforts to put our environment at risk. Part of the effort to get out of Afghanistan involves ramping up programs to help Afghans who aided us find refuge in our country--programs that were shut down, stopped cold, under the Trump Administration.
At the same time, the administration is also trying to undo the damage done by their predecessors at the southern border and the Vice President has been instrumentally involved in seeking to restore programs that would reduce migrant flows at their sources in Central America.
in addition, the administration has been appointing judges at a faster clip than its predecessors and doing so in way that is bringing unprecedented diversity to the nation's courts after years of efforts by the opposition to pack those courts.
What is more it is not just doing all these things--all these big, complex, urgent, essential things--at once, but it is doing them against scorched earth opposition that does not care who dies, whether they tell truth or lies, or whether the national interest is protected.
That opposition has blocked critical appointments from being confirmed. It has politicized. It has obstructed. It is actively advocating to gut our democracy and were it to be win control of the House or Senate next it would present an existential crisis for our system of gov't.
Every government should be doing a lot. This extraordinary list--which on top of it all is being conducted in the midst of overseeing the most extraordinary period of economic recovery in American history, the most jobs ever created in a presidencies first six months--
is all being done and by and large done now under profoundly difficult conditions by President Biden, Vice President Harris, and their team. Watch carefully. Not since the Second World War have we seen a government mobilize so broadly, do so much...
...do it by and large so well, do it in ways that have positively impacted the lives of so many in America and around the world (did I mention they are also overseeing the world's leading vaccine diplomacy program). It is an extraordinary case study in good governance.
Mistakes have been made and others will be made again. But extraordinarily, this administration has also shown the humility and competence and nimbleness to correct missteps, to learn, and do better as they go. Watch carefully and appreciate it.
Because you likely have never seen this kind of display of government management virtuosity before. It's hard to see the big picture sometimes for all the headlines...but this is the reality of what we're getting from our government right now.

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More from @djrothkopf

17 Sep
With every passing day, it looks less like we have one nation divided by differing political beliefs and more like we have two warring countries battling each other within shared borders. One side represents and seeks to preserve the United States. The other seeks to destroy it.
If the goal of the GOP is, at it appears to be, gut our democracy, to disenfranchise massive portions of our population, to impose the views of the minority on the majority, to attack principles like tolerance, that no individual is above the law, and equity...
...to literally reject reality and demonstrable facts and embrace an alternative reality founded in lies and dangerous to the health of the nation, our environment, our ideals and our standing in the world, then we have left the realm of political debate.
Read 21 tweets
11 Sep
A couple of years before 9/11, I participated in a scenario exercise about terror threats that Wall Street might face. It was on the top floor of the World Trade Center. It was sponsored in part by Cantor Fitzgerald.
Tragically, a number of those who attended from that firm died in the attack. Not too long after the attack, I recall running into Howard Lutnick, the chairman of the firm, and I will never forget the look in his eyes, how haunted he was by the losses on that day.
On the day itself, I was on the phone with a friend whose apartment had a view of the World Trade Center. He stopped talking and just started repeating "oh my God, oh my God" and then he told me to turn on my television because a plane had flown into one of the twin towers.
Read 24 tweets
8 Sep
Another failed NY Times oped by Bret Stephens. Is it a bigger failure for Stephens (who is consistently bad...but seldom this bad) or the editors at The NY Times (who chose to give this kind of fact-ignoring, reality twisting sophistry a platform)?
nytimes.com/2021/09/07/opi…
Biden has presided over a logistical miracle w/the vaccine distribution, an unprecedented economic recovery, more job creation than any other in his first 6 months, undoing of Trumpian damage done by executive order, record appointment of judges (& w/unprecedented diversity)...
...reentering the Paris Accord and the WTO, leading the world in vaccine diplomacy, ending a 20 year disaster of a conflict, getting 125,000 people out of Afghanistan in a matter of weeks in the face of huge challenges, making combatting the climate crisis a priority,...
Read 7 tweets
6 Sep
And now, the latest Biden report from the Conventional News Network...

It's been a rough summer for the president folks because...
--Job growth slowing slightly (although yes, Biden has created more jobs in his first six months than any president in history)
--COVID spiking (although yes, the admin performed a miracle getting the vaccine out & the GOP has systematically undermine admin efforts to save lives)
--Afghanistan exit chat (although yes, the president ended a futile 20 year war and the administration managed to evacuate 125,000 people so far in one of the biggest humanitarian airlifts every and ending wars is chaotic by nature)
Read 13 tweets
1 Sep
From Afghanistan to infrastructure, the climate crisis to defending democracy, China policy to inequality, today America is having a major debate about its priorities going forward. In many ways we have squandered the first decades of this century. It is time to rethink that.
President Biden has argued that rather than investing $3 trillion in wars--the vast majority of which goes to a handful of major U.S. defense contractors--we should invest it in the real sources of our security and strength: our people, our infrastructure, R&D, health, education.
He has argued that rather than focusing on wars that cannot be won, we should prepare for the challenges of the coming century, great power rivalries, competitiveness, and addressing urgent needs like the climate crisis.
Read 9 tweets
31 Aug
In the months & years ahead we need to do a deep accounting, not just within the government but on the national level, of the flaws in our system, our politics & our society that lead us to make mistakes on the scale of the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War & the "War on Terror."
While the war in Afghanistan began with a natural impulse to seek justice in the wake of 9/11, the policy process guiding it quickly was hijacked by opportunists with personal agendas that were ideological or industry-driven. Lies became the foundations for massive national endea
But they were not effectively challenges. The Iraq War was an indecent and indefensible distraction from the mission to get Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, but the majority of the foreign policy establishment supported it and accepted many lies without questioning them.
Read 25 tweets

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