April 27, 2021

Joe Biden has ambitious plans for his next 100 days in office, hoping to muscle through a pair of historic spending packages — but only if the summer curse doesn’t derail him.

Summers, indeed, are where a White House’s carefully laid plans go to die. George W. Bush was on vacation when one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history hit. Donald Trump faced back-to-back shootings in Texas and Ohio that left more than 30 people dead in less than 24 hours. And for Barack Obama, the pitfalls of the summer became a running gag inside the West Wing, from hostile town halls in 2009, to a lingering oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, to a debt ceiling crisis in 2011, to a confrontation with Syria over chemical weapons use in 2013, to the riots in Ferguson, Mo. in 2014.

“You need to get as many big things done as quickly as possible in the first year before you get overtaken by events,” said Ben LaBolt, a former Obama official who is close to the Biden White House. “You can never predict the BP oil spill that might distract some of the administration’s attention and you want to use your momentum as effectively as possible while you still have it and you still set the terms of the agenda.”

Read more: