Whether we all agree on the following list, one thing is for certain.
There is a sense of direction coming down from the top. Our job now
is to put in the effort to direct the new energy in the directions
that will do the Working Class, and the nation, the most good.
Carl Jarvis
Opinion by
Jennifer Rubin
Columnist
Jan. 25, 2021 at 4:45 a.m. PST
President Biden has not completed his first week in office, but
already there is much to celebrate. Let’s count the ways:
1. You can ignore Twitter
2. The White House briefing room is not an Orwellian nightmare of lies
3. We are now confronting white domestic terrorism
4. We are not paying for golf trips
5. There are no presidential relatives in government
6. The tenor of hearings is sober and serious
7. Qualified and knowledgeable nominees have been selected for senior spots
8. We have a first lady who engages with the public
9. We have not heard a word from presidential children
10. We are now tough on Russian human rights abuses
11. We get normal readouts of sane conversations between the president
and foreign leaders
12. The White House philosophy is to underpromise and overdeliver, not
the other way around
13. Manners are in, bullying is out
14. You feel calmer after hearing the president
15. Fact-checkers are not overworked
16. Quality entertainers want to perform for the White House
17. We have seen the president’s tax records
18. The president is able to articulate policy details, coherently even
19. The worst the press can come up with is the president’s watch
20. We have a White House staff that looks like America
21. We have a national covid-19 plan
22. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases Anthony S. Fauci is liberated, sounds happy and even looks
younger
23. Fauci, not the president, briefs on the science of covid-19 and
efficacy of vaccines
24. Masks and social distancing in the White House
25. The White House has policy initiatives and proposals, not merely
leaving it all to Congress
26. The administration is committed to releasing information, not
covering it up, on the slaughter of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
27. The Muslim ban is gone
28. It is the Republicans not the Democrats who are in disarray
29. The national security adviser has not been fired for lying to the FBI
30. No Soviet-style fawning over the president by his subordinates
31. The president takes daily, in-person intelligence briefings
32. The president does not care about Air Force One colors
33. We have a president familiar with the Constitution
34. Real cable news outlets get high ratings, others not so much
35. President Andrew Jackson is out of the Oval Office, Benjamin Franklin is in
36. Voice of America is back in the hands of actual journalists
37. We get memes about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), not crowd size
38. We are back in the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization
39. Instead of running it like a business, the new administration will
try running government competently
40. We have a president who doesn’t think military service is for
“suckers” and who doesn’t send his “love” to people assaulting law
enforcement
41. The secretary of treasury nominee has her own Hamilton lyrics
42. Amanda Gorman is a household name
43. More than two-thirds of Americans approve of the White House
covid-19 approach.
44. No more work-free “executive time” in the presidential living quarters
45. We have a churchgoing president “who has spent a lifetime steeped
in Christian rituals and practices.”
46. We have first dogs
47. The vice president’s spouse does not teach at a school that bars
LGBTQ students
48. The White House takes the Hatch Act seriously
49. The administration wants...
*Oops! Sorry to have cut off the last two.
