Our Man Joe: Same-Day Disappointment—Guaranteed!

The first 100 day of a presidency now take fewer than 100 minutes

By Ed Goldman

Just three weeks ago, on the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration as president, the aphids were already gathering on the plants of democracy. (You can see why I’ve cut back on the metaphor-consulting side of my business.)

William A. Gastron, a longtime Wall Street Journal columnist, wrote that how Biden ends up handling the COVID-19 pandemic will “make or break” him. Again, this was on the first day of his presidency—which means, given the realities of newspaper deadlines, Gastron had probably written it a few days earlier, maybe even several days. Cops usually call this process a stakeout; perps call it lying in wait.

Within a few days, editorials began to pop up all over the country issuing dire warnings of what Biden had better get to, and double-quick! Significantly, these didn’t emanate solely from conservative media outlets, which proves that setting someone up for failure can be a nonpartisan sport. 

It reminded me—in a much lesser but comparable sense—of my very first day on the job as the City of Sacramento’s public information officer, in the early fall of 1976. 

Several issues were on the ballot for November. One was an initiative that would require homeowners to place their garden refuse (leaves, dead plants and grass clippings) in collection bins, rather than pile it at their curbs, as they’d been doing for decades and had come to think of as an inalienable right. Curbside, the debris would then await the arrival of the City’s mysteriously-beloved “Claw,” an enormous mechanical scooper, to remove the mortally wounded flora on a designated weekday. 

When I asked residents back then why they were against mandated “containerization,” as the ballot measure branded it, some of them, especially in the leafier, older areas of town—one of which, East Sacramento, I ended up living in for 40 years—rhapsodized about the aesthetic splendor of seeing multi-colored foliage stacked erratically in front of the area’s homes, though so voluminously as to make driving down the streets a treacherous autumn undertaking. And forget about parking in front of your own home.

One of the other issues, which had more far-reaching fiscal impact, was called “Retirement Measure E,” which had something to do with funding the City employees’ retirement system. 

The “containerization” mandate, as it was called, lost big. But the retirement issue, as parochial and self-serving as it was, triumphed. The mayor, city council and my boss, the city manager, were happy about that and gave me largely unearned credit for its success, attributing a few ads and guest editorials I drafted to having helped turn the tide. This was very kind of them considering the polls had indicated, from the time I arrived in September to the day before the election not quite two months later, that the measure was headed to victory. As I recall, those poll numbers were just about the same before and after my ads and editorials. At least, I consoled myself, my efforts hadn’t worsened them.

Leading up to all of this, however, from the day I walked into City Hall for the first time, was the constant ribbing I took as people offered me left-handed welcomes to the job. The theme was, “This is your first day? You’re already six months behind!”

That’s what Joe Biden’s getting. He seems to be taking it in good humor. God knows—and really, we all know—how his predecessor would have reacted to the mere hint of disappointment among the vox populi. Especially if someone asked him to spell, pronounce or define vox populi.

”So far” being about two minutes on the job. And yet, like Joe Biden and me, Finch was already six months behind. My, the aphids are out early this year.