Remember when presidents used to be presidential? Yeah, so do I. It wasn't that long ago, after all. Tonight, President Joe Biden thankfully gave us a preview of what his next four years will be like -- calm, collected, truthful, and reassuring. And it was just what the doctor ordered, as far as I'm concerned.

Biden spoke on a momentous day. Not only did Biden sign his first big legislative achievement into law earlier in the day (his 50th or 51st day in office, depending on how you count), but it is also exactly one year since the previous president finally had to face the reality that we were in a national crisis. Back then, he begrudgingly declared an emergency, and then went right back to rampant denial over the seriousness of the disease, the likely scope of the problem, and what it would take to get us out of it. Not to put too fine a point on it, he lied to the American people, over and over again. Not only that, he actually mocked anyone with the temerity to disagree with him -- which included his own government scientists. This led to the United States becoming the poster child for the world for "how not to fight a pandemic." It led to the highest infection rates on the planet, and the highest death toll by far -- both per capita and in raw numbers. We have had more deaths than India and China, both of which have over one billion citizens. This record of failure simply did not need to happen, but it did because of the absolute vacuum of leadership from the White House.

That era, Joe Biden proclaimed in numerous subtle and not-so-subtle ways, is now over.

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Today marks the halfway period through President Biden's first 100 days. He set a lot of goals for himself during this period, and while no president completes his entire list, Biden certainly seems to be making a lot of progress (the AP ran a handy scorecard today, so you can check the general status of individual promises). Biden's list, to his credit, is a lot wider and deeper than most such lists of presidential campaign promises -- but then again, he had a lot to do to immediately overturn the worst of Donald Trump's disasters and wreckage, both here at home and in the rest of the world as well. Today was a particularly productive day for Biden, because the House just passed his first signature piece of legislation, the American Rescue Plan Act. Biden will sign it by the end of the week, and the breadth of even just this first Biden achievement is truly striking. Not to mention how popular it is with the public, already.

So what will be center stage for Biden's second act? That's the question many are now wondering. Biden did (by all accounts) focus like the proverbial laser on getting the pandemic relief bill through Congress, but not to the exclusion of all else. His appointees are moving through the Senate, and today he got three more cabinet members confirmed, including Merrick Garland as the new attorney general. With more and more of his cabinet in place, moving forward on multiple fronts is going to get a lot easier for Biden.

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President Joe Biden is going to take a victory lap Thursday, with a primetime Oval Office address to the American people. He deserves to. As he said to Barack Obama when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed, this is a big [expletive gerund deleted] deal. By some measures, it is the biggest such big deal in history. And even though it is already wildly popular with the public, Biden learned the lesson of Obama's first big emergency stimulus bill and will be touting the American Rescue Plan Act's accomplishments to the skies, while encouraging others to do the same. This is doubtlessly going to pay off politically for him. Which he and his fellow Democrats also deserve.

As with any large bill -- and most especially with large budget bills that only require a Senate majority vote -- a whole lot of different things made it into the final bill. It is not merely $1,400 checks and money for vaccine distribution, which are the two top-line items the media has mostly zeroed in on. There are plenty of other benefits which will continue to make people's lives easier, long after the initial check is cashed. And if Democrats do a good job of pointing it out, they'll get the credit for making people's lives better.

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It's now official. Senator Joe Manchin is the second-most-powerful person in Washington. Obviously, President Joe Biden is still number one, but Biden's entire agenda now hinges on the whims of Manchin... and everyone knows it. And Manchin is enjoying his newfound stature so much that it seems pretty certain he's going to enjoy flexing his political power over and over again for the next two years.

To be sure, there is at least one other Democratic senator vying for the position, but Kyrsten Sinema has so far been much less visible, no matter how hard she tries. When it came time to vote on whether to include the $15-an-hour minimum wage hike in the American Rescue Plan Act, Sinema tried to co-opt the image of a senator from Arizona dramatically giving a very literal thumbs-down. But unlike when John McCain made it famous on the vote to kill Obamacare, Sinema's attempt seemed to many rather flippant, and what will be remembered from this whole episode instead was Manchin shutting down the Senate for almost ten hours while he wheeled and dealed with both Republicans and Democrats. On a day everyone knew was going to be excruciatingly long already, Manchin was perfectly comfortable hijacking center stage for almost ten hours. In the end, minor tweaks were made -- though none of them were nearly important enough to justify Manchin's extended hissy fit.

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President Joe Biden is about to have a very good month. The Senate is on the brink of passing (after all the Republican time-wasting obstacles are cleared) a mammoth $1.9 trillion pandemic recovery bill. The White House has taken to calling it the "Rescue Plan." It is wildly popular with the public. Next week, the House will pass the same version and Biden will likely sign it immediately thereafter. It will be the first big legislative victory for the president and the Democratic Congress.

After this happens, Biden will undoubtedly emerge from his self-imposed retreat in the White House (he wanted everyone to know how important this bill was by postponing several other traditional things until it passed). Biden will give his first press conference, he will speak to a joint session of Congress (the "don't call it a State Of The Union" speech), he will likely make his first foreign trip and then host his first world leader at the White House. More and more of his cabinet will be confirmed by the Senate, meaning his administration will now be able to get in gear in a big way. In the meantime, those $1,400 checks will go out, more and more people will get vaccinated -- including (importantly) teachers -- and more schools will reopen while more businesses will return to some sort of normalcy. Also, the House will pass a number of important bills to address a wide range of problems -- each of which also polls very strongly with the public.

That all adds up to a solid month of good news for Biden. His job approval rating is already at 60 percent (over 10 points higher than Donald Trump ever saw), and with all this to come it wouldn't be surprising to see it head upwards even more throughout the month.

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There's an old and now-dated joke that is the genesis of that headline. The setup to the joke is the question: "What are the three greatest lies in America?" The punchline is: "(1.) The check is in the mail, (2.) I will respect you in the morning, and (3.) I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

I am reminded of this now because of a confluence of disparate issues, from Democrats bolstering the rights of transgendered people to the reaction to the news that the publisher of the Dr. Seuss canon will not be publishing six of his books anymore because of racially insensitive depictions. And a lot of other unrelated things, as well, such as Donald Trump railing about seemingly mundane issues like toilets and lightbulbs and dishwashers. Many of these things are now being lumped together politically as a conservative crusade against "cancel culture."

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We are in the midst of one of those rare seasons in Washington where Congress actually gets some things done. Joe Biden's legislative legacy will begin with his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, which now seems all but certain to pass. Hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour fell by the wayside, true, but the rest of the bill will be historic nonetheless (there are all sorts of things in it, above and beyond the pandemic relief and $1,400 checks and state and local aid). Meanwhile, the House is about to begin a marathon period of passing Democratic agenda items and sending the bills over to the Senate. First and foremost of these is H.R. 1 -- the "For The People Act." And if even some of the key ideas contained in this breathtaking and sweeping proposal ever make it into law, it would likely be the most consequential election law ever passed. So it's a good bill for Nancy Pelosi to lead with.

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The issue of voting rights could be a pivotal one for Democrats, if they would focus intensely on it for the next month or so, and by doing so get their message out to as many people as possible. The political equation is pretty simple to understand, after all: Democrats are trying to make it easier for people to vote, while Republicans are making it as difficult as they know how. Republicans do not want you to be able to easily vote, because when that happens, they lose elections. Plain and simple. And they're even flat-out admitting it, these days.

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The prospects of Democrats scoring a big victory on hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour are getting dimmer and dimmer. Sadly, this is true not just in the current pandemic relief bill, but overall -- because if it isn't included now it's hard to see how it is ever going to pass otherwise. One has to be forgiven for wondering if this was really President Joe Biden's plan all along; that including it in this bill was nothing short of a feint, to provide a lightning rod for Republicans to attack while the rest of the bill goes largely ignored. If this is true, it worked like a charm, but that's an awfully cynical ploy for Biden at the start of his legislative legacy. And it's an ominous indication that a whole lot of other progressive ideas are also never going to actually be enacted, too.

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In the past week, two of the biggest political stories have been which way the Senate parliamentarian was going to rule on an arcane rule in the chamber, and how one of President Joe Biden's nominees might be in trouble because in the past she had (gasp!) tweeted such mean things as: "vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz" (a statement that is not provably true only because vampires are mythical creatures while the heartlessness of Ted Cruz is, sadly, all too real).

Not to belabor the obvious, but this is a decided difference from the past four years. To drive the point home: last week there were zero nasty or racist or misogynistic tweets from the president, there were zero instances of the White House press secretary just flat-out lying from the briefing room podium, and zero times when the president was obviously completely and utterly ignorant about either basic facts, reality, how the Constitution works, or federal law in general. None. Zero. Nary a one.

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