President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to “restore the soul of America.” It is a worthy, poetic goal. Another, more prosaic objective also lies before him: fixing America’s plumbing.
By which I mean repairing the machinery of government, which has been corroded by Trumpian incompetence and malevolence. In the months ahead, there are at least three areas that need the Biden transition team’s urgent attention: policy, people and public trust.Follow the latest on Election 2020
The federal government is a massive, slow-moving ship. Even in the best of times it is often dysfunctional. But for the past four years, the Trump administration has deliberately made parts of government more dysfunctional, throwing sand in the gears in order to sabotage programs the president doesn’t like that are nonetheless required by statute.
The processing of various immigration applications has slowed, for instance; the number of enforcement actions against polluters, white-collar criminals and even child-sex traffickers has plummeted.
