Philip Bump writes:

When he was running for president last year, one of Joe Biden’s pitches to voters was that, if he won, they would be able to stop paying attention to the White House all the time.

“Remember when you didn’t have to think about the president every single day,” one ad from Biden’s campaign began, “and instead there was someone in that office who thought about you?”

After four years of President Donald Trump dominating the country’s attention — often through sheer force of will — Biden was promising something much more chill. Just a president presidenting away in Washington, not one focused on how well his latest tweet was doing or what Fox News panelists were saying.

So far, that’s what Biden has delivered. His presence in public is traditional to the point of anesthetic. His tweets have the sanitized gleam of a McDonald’s ad. He reintroduced the presidential weekly address but you would be forgiven for not noticing.

That approach stands in contrast to the first 50 days of Trump’s presidency, certainly. By that point, Trump had set about implementing many of the more controversial policies of his administration: shutting down travel from predominantly Muslim countries (spurring massive protests), overhauling the federal bureaucracy, lashing out at federal law enforcement and targeting the Affordable Care Act. He was a constant presence, tweeting incessantly and dominating cable-news coverage in a way that Biden hasn’t. [Continue reading…]