How long will it take for Biden to gain the trust of tens of millions of dissatisfied citizens?
Donald Trump will leave the White House on January 20 and hand over power to Joe Biden, the 46th President-elect of the United States.
The fluctuating events that will occur until the day of the handover of power and the inauguration ceremony will not affect the transfer of power in a country whose democratic institutions are powerful and its system is governed and managed by law. But how the United States will be governed over the next four years, under Joe Biden, is a more important and less discussed matter.
Mr. Biden's administration will be the heir of an economy crumbled by the Coronavirus and a large group of distrustful and dissatisfied Americans who believe the election was fraudulent.
These distrustful people whose representatives blocked the streets leading to the US Congress on Wednesday, January 7, and stormed government buildings, are the citizens that Mr. Biden will be ruling over for the next four years.
Mr. Trump faced a number of challenges and obstacles from the day he came to power in 2016 until the last days of his presidency. A big part of them were domestic issues and ongoing clashes with representatives of the democratic party, and the other part were international issues and his foreign policies.
All those critical issues, including withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran, withdrawal from UNESCO and the United Nations Human Rights Council, numerous problems with NATO, a tariffs war with the European Union and economic dispute with China, its ups and downs with Turkey and withdrawal from the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Strategic Weapons with Russia, will now form part of Biden''s agenda.
Despite his clashes with Democratic Party leaders, Mr. Trump managed to boost the US's economic growth and employment rate in his first two years in office.
Had the Coronavirus outbreak not crippled the US economy, confrontations with China and the trade war with Beijing could have had a lasting and profound effect on the success of his economic plans.
Joe Biden will take power in two weeks, but the US's current approach to China will not change with power transfer. There are many questions about the spread of the Coronavirus from China and intelligence and security institutions still haven't submitted their reports to the US Congress and Senate. (The World Health Organization (WHO) has also recently published a report on the Chinese government's lack of cooperation with its inspectors.)
Mr. Biden must, on the one hand, restore order, security and trust in the American society, and on the other, he has to resolve the turmoil in foreign policies of the former administration.
Are four years enough for that?
He has to resolve the turmoil in the foreign policies of the former administration.
Over the past four years, Mr. Trump has experienced many conflicts, but of a different kind. Accusations of collusion with Russia, fraud in the 2016 elections, Russia's interference in the US elections, sexual and moral accusations widely reported in the media, paying hush money to women he had sex with, and releasing a telephone conversation with the Ukrainian president, which led to his impeachment in December 2019, are among them.
Trump was the third president in US history to be impeached in the House of Representatives on charges of abuse of power.
In the first three years of Trump's presidency, there was not a week that his photo or an article about his stupidities or scandals attributed to him were not published by pro-Democrat media.
Reading and laughing at these issues may have become normal for some Americans, but Mr. Trump never got used to them. His daily clashes with the House of Representatives and the aftermaths made life hell for everyone in these past four years.
Now Mr. Trump will leave and hand over a Congress aligned with the president-elect and a Senate that in a balanced situation consists of 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans.
Although the Senate and Congress support him, the actions that Biden's administration must immediately put on its agenda do not seem easy.
International issues and comforting millions of Americans who believe there were cheating in the elections and that Biden has stolen the election result seem like difficult challenges.
It took Mr. Trump at least two years to liberate from claims of Russian interference and fraud in the 2016 election (although its shadow still looms over him.)
Now the question that Joe Biden faces is: How long will it take to gain back the trust of tens of millions of citizens?
Confronting China and Russia will be one of the biggest foreign policy challenges of Biden's government. However, other very important issues will also require immediate attendance.
The president-elect's ability to rebuild what has been destroyed, and the short four-year period of time he has, raises this question: What can he accomplish in these four years?
