Opinion: The Amy Coney Barrett test

On Sep 26, 2021

Take President Joe Biden. He has been walking a tightrope, trying to please both the progressives and moderates in his party, hoping Democrats will unite to launch the biggest expansion of social spending in nearly 60 years. He risks disaster if he can’t get the two sides to make a deal.

“This is a time like no other,” wrote Frida Ghitis. “But Democrats in Congress seem to be blind to what’s at stake.” As they battle over the size of the budget reconciliation bill, they are forgetting the threat posed by President Donald Trump’s effort to delegitimize Biden’s victory in the 2020 election — and game the system for the 2022 and 2024 votes.

Biden spent the week on the defensive — lambasted by voices in his own party and by Republicans for his handling of a humanitarian crisis over migrants in Texas, seeing his plans for widespread Covid-19 booster shots get brought down to size by some scientists and government regulators, grappling with the fallout from the US deal to share nuclear submarine technology with Australia.

Addressing the UN General Assembly Tuesday, Biden promised America would play an expansive role in tackling the world’s problems, Aaron David Miller wrote, but he “is an embattled president with dropping approval ratings and a hugely ambitious domestic social and economic agenda hanging in the balance.”

“Abroad, recent actions — including a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan conflict, an errant deadly drone strike in Kabul and his French-fried diplomatic row with Emmanuel Macron over the sale of submarines to Australia from which France is now excluded — have raised questions among allies and adversaries alike about America’s competency, reliability and commitment…The challenge for the President is now to deliver and to close the widening gap between his words and deeds. If he can’t, American credibility will fall into the gap he himself helped to create.”

The fate of Biden’s sweeping ambitions in Congress should become clearer in the next few days, wrote Julian Zelizer. “If the week ends badly for the President, it won’t just be his problem — it will be an ominous sign of the broader problems that afflict liberalism and the ability of our government to respond to major crises. Our planet is in demise, the systems that perpetuate racial injustice are still in place and economic inequality is only getting worse. Will Washington be able to step up and finally provide big solutions?”

Justices, prove it

On September 12, Senator Mitch McConnell introduced the Supreme Court’s newest and youngest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, at a 30th anniversary celebration of a leadership center named after him at the University of Louisville. “My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” said the 49-year-old Barrett, who is known for her conservative views. The court rules based on the law, not politics, she said. “Judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties.”

Her remarks echoed…