Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post celebrates 50 changes since Biden arrived less than a week ago (it’s a good list, not a perfect list): 

1. You can ignore Twitter

2. The White House briefing room is not an Orwellian nightmare of lies

3. We are now confronting white domestic terrorism

4. We are not paying for golf trips

5. There are no presidential relatives in government

6. The tenor of hearings is sober and serious

7. Qualified and knowledgeable nominees have been selected for senior spots

8. We have a first lady who engages with the public

9. We have not heard a word from presidential children

10. We are now tough on Russian human rights abuses

11. We get normal readouts of sane conversations between the president and foreign leaders

12. The White House philosophy is to underpromise and overdeliver, not the other way around

13. Manners are in, bullying is out

14. You feel calmer after hearing the president

15. Fact-checkers are not overworked

16. Quality entertainers want to perform for the White House

17. We have seen the president’s tax records

18. The president is able to articulate policy details, coherently even

19. The worst the press can come up with is the president’s watch

20. We have a White House staff that looks like America

21. We have a national covid-19 plan

22. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony S. Fauci is liberated, sounds happy and even looks younger

23. Fauci, not the president, briefs on the science of covid-19 and efficacy of vaccines

24. Masks and social distancing in the White House

25. The White House has policy initiatives and proposals, not merely leaving it all to Congress

26. The administration is committed to releasing information, not covering it up, on the slaughter of journalist Jamal Khashoggi

27. The Muslim ban is gone

28. It is the Republicans not the Democrats who are in disarray

29. The national security adviser has not been fired for lying to the FBI

30. No Soviet-style fawning over the president by his subordinates

31. The president takes daily, in-person intelligence briefings

32. The president does not care about Air Force One colors

33. We have a president familiar with the Constitution

34. Real cable news outlets get high ratings, others not so much

35. President Andrew Jackson is out of the Oval Office, Benjamin Franklin is in

36. Voice of America is back in the hands of actual journalists

37. We get memes about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), not crowd size

38. We are back in the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization

39. Instead of running it like a business, the new administration will try running government competently

40. We have a president who doesn’t think military service is for “suckers” and who doesn’t send his “love” to people assaulting law enforcement

41. The secretary of treasury nominee has her own Hamilton lyrics

42. Amanda Gorman is a household name

43. More than two-thirds of Americans approve of the White House covid-19 approach.

44. No more work-free “executive time” in the presidential living quarters

45. We have a churchgoing president “who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices.”

46. We have first dogs

47. The vice president’s spouse does not teach at a school that bars LGBTQ students

48. The White House takes the Hatch Act seriously

49. The administration wants as many people as possible to vote

50. The president will talk more to our allies than to Russian President Vladimir Putin