https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...FQd?li=BBnb7Kz
                                         
                                      The unraveling contradictions and ambiguities in the Biden  administration's approach to the apparently imperishable COVID-19 crisis  has many ironies, and it presents a grave threat to an administration  whose standing in public opinion is beginning to waver.
     

    © Getty Images  Honeymoon's over: Biden's record may have Americans demanding a divorce   More than six months have passed since Inauguration Day. As is  customary, the political honeymoon granted to all new presidents - all,  that is, except Donald Trump - is ending. The country's judgment of the  administration's performance no longer will benefit from the levitation  of goodwill following a presidential election. Instead, it will be  judged more critically.
             
 The president already is seriously underwater on 
immigration, 
crime and 
inflation.  He scores well, and deservedly so, for the general reduction in the  combative, antagonistic atmosphere of Washington that afflicted the  entire Trump presidency.
It remains a matter of some dispute  whether the uproarious ambience of the Trump years was chiefly the fault  of the president or of his mortal enemies. Regardless, as president,  Trump was in the country's face every day and 
tweeting at it  every night, and he has been replaced by a regime that is not just  quiet but often almost comatose - and that has been a balm for the  country's nerves, if not the answer to all of its public policy wishes.
The  other point, apart from the ambience of his administration for which  President Biden wins approval, has been his handling of the pandemic.  The almost airtight Trump-hating political media created a state of  national hysteria over the coronavirus and then hung it around the  president's neck like a noose. The new administration naturally  benefited from the steady decline of the coronavirus since Inauguration  Day. The public scarcely recalls that, as candidates in 2020, 
Biden and running mate 
Kamala Harris said they would not trust a vaccine sponsored by Trump. Nevertheless, they have taken credit for the decisive 
declines  in the incidence and mortality rates of the coronavirus as a result of  the development and initial distribution of those vaccines under Trump's  watch, far ahead of what scientific opinion had thought possible - and  in stark contrast to 
Chinese and 
Russian vaccines that have been exposed as inadequate or ineffectual.
To  some extent, Trump made his opponents' task easier by his bear-baiting  news conferences and by the fluctuating attention - sometimes  dismissive, sometimes rather alarmist - that he gave to the virus. But  there is no question that the coronavirus was a powerful ally of the  Democratic presidential campaign.
The arrival of variants of the COVID-19 virus, which appear to be 
more contagious but also 
less dangerous  to vaccinated individuals than the original coronavirus, has  complicated Biden's response to the pandemic. The administration has 
failed  in its effort to have the entire population double-vaccinated, partly  because of a substantial degree of suspicion of the vaccination process  and its effectiveness, which is unjustified in the case of adults. And  the administration has been reduced to the absurdity of speaking in  various authoritative voices advocating contradictory courses of action.
The president has 
attacked social media companies  for allowing vaccination opponents to be heard through their platforms,  even as the administration considers collaborating with social media to  encourage vaccination. While claiming credit for a "
second declaration of independence" from the pandemic, the administration is 
discussing whether to recommend the return of mask mandates and perhaps other, stricter directives, even for fully vaccinated people.
It  is going to be increasingly implausible for the administration to claim  credit for defeating the coronavirus if it resurrects widely detested  methods of fighting it. The official administration line completely  deemphasizes the previous administration's success in bringing forward  effective vaccines at record speed, while claiming that new variants 
may justify  a reimposition of some aspects of last year's coronavirus shutdowns  that profoundly irritated and demoralized the country when applied to a 
more dangerous virus  about which much less was known. It will not only be difficult for  President Biden to harvest any credit in the polls for this performance;  depending on how the numbers break and how the administration responds,  it may be hard to convince the public that this president has not  converted a public-health advance into a retreat.
The polls of Biden's performance are 
deteriorating, including the general canvas of the nation's 
state of optimism.  The comparative silence imposed by the administration's social media  allies on Trump appears, perversely, to have helped reduce the  widespread public fatigue with his aggressive personality. Similarly,  the effort by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to produce a  reputable congressional committee finding that Trump provoked an  insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 may, instead, highlight the  fact that Trump-hate, the almost unitary basis of Democratic national  campaigning for the past five years, has run out of steam.
Democrats  will have to stand on their own record, which is deteriorating every  month. And their great COVID ally of 2020 could now, because of their  own errors and self-generated credibility problems, become their most  formidable enemy this year and in 2022's midterm elections.
Conrad  Black is an essayist and author of 10 books, including three on  Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. He  co-hosts the "Scholars & Sense" podcast with former Education Secretary Bill Bennett and Hoover Institution scholar Victor Davis Hanson. Follow him on Twitter @ConradMBlack.