Biden’s presidency begins with high approval ratings, but what matters is how he governs

This appeared in The Millennial Source

If Biden hopes to enact his agenda and establish his own legacy, he is going to have to decide which method he prefers: compromise or fight for change.

President Joe Biden entered the White House with something his predecessor, President Donald Trump, never attained: an approval rating above 50%. That’s according to polling by the Pew Research Center, Gallup and Morning Consult, all of which found Biden’s approval rating at 56% or higher. By contrast, Trump left office with a 34% approval rating and an average rating of 41%.

Biden began his presidency with appeals to unity and a promise to seek bipartisan governance. In a presidential election that had the highest turnout since 1900, Biden also achieved the largest popular vote total in history, earning 81,281,502 votes to Trump’s 74,222,593.

With all of that going for him, Biden still faces a bitterly divided political landscape and entrenched party polarization. To succeed, he will have to meet the challenge of appealing to both the centrist and left-leaning members of his base.

Biden ran on a platform that the Justice Democrats, a progressive political action committee, described to Vox’s Matthew…