WASHINGTON – As Iran fired one ballistic missile after another at Israel, President Joe Biden anxiously monitored the developing crisis in real time from a dark-paneled room on the White House ground floor.
A video screen on the wall enabled the president and his national security team to track the missiles as they streaked across the sky and headed toward Tel Aviv. Biden and his team could tell from the monitor how many missiles were in the air. What they could not know right away was how many, if any, were striking their target.
Tension built inside the Situation Room as Biden and his aides waited for an update. At one point, the president got up from his leather chair at the head of the conference table and paced nervously around the room.
The conflict threatening to inflame the Middle East that afternoon wasn’t the only emerging crisis on Biden’s mind. Earlier that day, Oct. 1, tens of thousands of U.S. dockworkers had walked off the job, closing ports along the East and Gulf coasts and shutting down ocean shipping from Maine to Texas.
The labor dispute threatened to leave shelves empty, raise prices and potentially disrupt recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene, which just six days earlier had devastated parts of Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. Making matters worse, in a few days another powerful storm would develop in the western Caribbean and hurl toward Florida’s West Coast.
Managing the response to three unfolding events would be a test for Biden, who had five decades of experience in government but just a little more than three months left in office. Biden had reluctantly ended his bid for re-election in late July amid questions about whether he could win a second term.
Biden’s shaky performance during a presidential debate with his nemesis, Donald Trump, had raised doubts about whether he was up to the rigors of the presidency. But behind the scenes, aides described him as fully engaged as he deals with the job’s daily pressures and unforeseen challenges, even as Trump won a convincing victory over Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday.
On Thursday, Biden departs for Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, followed by Brazil, where he will attend and meet for the final time as president with leaders of the Group of 20, or G20, nations. Hanging over the global gatherings will be the uncertainty surrounding Biden’s departure from office in January and Trump’s stunning return to the presidency.
With time running short, Biden still has an extensive to-do list before walking out of the Oval Office for the final time as president.
“We feel time is slipping through the hourglass, and we want to complete so much of what we’ve started,” said Liz Sherwood-Randall, who serves as Biden’s homeland security adviser and has worked for him off and on for the past four decades.
But unexpected events – at home and across the world – often intrude on a president’s plans. Which is why, for several days in late September and October, Biden toggled between a cascade of converging crises that posed an end-game challenge to his one-term presidency.