WASHINGTON — As the coronavirus pandemic expands, President Biden faces a widening domestic challenge not of his making but nonetheless his responsibility as the nation’s leader. His success or failure to survive it politically rides on his ability to navigate the crisis confronting him, as he just begins his stewardship in a climate of pessimism and harsh public judgment.

Essentially, all he can do for the time being is to assure his fellow Americans he is adhering to the best information and strategies of his top medical and scientific advisers, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, to help the nation weather the storm as he strives to revive the U.S. economy.

To that end, after initial hesitancy to implement the bipartisan physical infrastructure repair bill Biden pushed through Congress last August, he has committed himself to urgent and visible on-the-ground achievements that could arrest his slippage in public-opinion polls. Less than half of surveyed voters in his own Democratic Party have expressed satisfaction with his performance, along with solid Republican opposition.

The sudden emergence of the new and devastating omicron variant of coronavirus has raised questions of the effectiveness of the three recently developed vaccines to combat it. Biden’s rapid mobilization of the pharmaceutical industry to develop enough of them for all eligible Americans, including children aged five and above, has been an impressive beginning.

But Biden’s inability to convince or cajole the approximately 40% of those eligible to seek and receive the vaccinations continues to undermine his effort, despite urgent pleas that the failure leaves millions of fellow citizens in jeopardy of infection and possible death.

As a consequence, Biden’s reputation as a rather soft-sell politician who has relied on being seen as folksy plain old Joe rather than on employing bare-knuckle persuasion seems to be may be taking a toll on his leadership stature.

His Republican critics, not to mention Democratic progressives and liberals, complicate his task of achieving their concept of a presidential presence in the current climate of national crisis.

All this jeopardizes the prospect for rapid or eventual recovery from perhaps the worse challenge to America’s stature at home and abroad. During Biden’s 36 years in the Senate, he developed personal relationships with other world leaders, especially within the Western Alliance that he championed as a globe-trotting chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It was a credential that persuaded President Barack Obama to choose him as his running mate. For eight years he served as a knowledgeable and familiar figure on turf about which Obama himself was a novice.

The current pandemic crisis confronts Joe Biden with a challenge, despite all his political experience. It comes amid doubts that the low-key Biden style and persona can rally the country to recover from this uncommon test of survival. But the challenge is also an opportunity for him to earn a stronger public appreciation that he has the presidential stature that the office warrants.

He has shown no reluctance to “go big” in his policy aspirations, in the manner of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal that rescued the country from the Great Depression. He is inviting America now to take a major bet on him, and insisting he is up to the task.

Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.

Newsletter