Yahoo Finance Biden will need 'new models' to address 'old problems': former congressman
Former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts told Yahoo Finance that in order to keep promises to voters, including Black voters, President Joe Biden will need to find new ways to deal with old problems.
“You know, there are some conditions in every community, in poor neighborhoods, red, yellow, Brown, Black, and white. There are conditions that it really doesn't matter who's in the White House,” Watts, who is chairman of the Black News Channel, told Yahoo Finance. “Those conditions four years down the road, eight years down the road, they don't change.”
Watts said his company would be “monitoring” the new Biden-Harris administration to see if promises made, “will be promises kept.”
Part of the problem, the former congressman explained, is that White House administrations throughout the years have continuously used the “same old models” for the same problems.
Watts explained that under President Trump as well as Obama, Bush and Clinton, “if you were in poverty 16 years ago, you're still in poverty today. If you're afraid to change the way we try to deal with many of our problems, you're going to get the same old results.”
Watts “hopes President Biden will be open to looking at new ways of dealing with old problems,” instead of using “models that don’t work.”
If not, he explained, conditions won’t change over the next four or eight years, and voters will still be in poverty, or still live below the poverty level.
It’s all about trust
But Watts believes that Biden “starts with a good foundation. That foundation is trust. I think he meant every word that he said,” in his inaugural speech.
“That's who Joe Biden is. However, the difficulty now is going to be executing. And then that's where the tough part comes in,” Watts said.
During his time in Congress, Watts recounted serving with Biden, who served in the Senate from 1973 to 2009.
“No one ever accused him of not being a decent guy,” he said, adding that being trusted on “both sides of the aisle” helped Biden and other senators “get things done.”
“I think President Biden brings that same trust, or I get the sense that [the] Joe Biden that I knew — that I had dealings with, brings that same trust to the table.”
But in order to resonate with voters who believed that the election was stolen, Biden will have to “lower the temperature,” Watts explained, adding that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election “There's been so much chaos and dysfunction and lying and conspiracy theories over the last four years.”
“I think he's got enough trust I think with Mitch McConnell and others in the Republican and the Democrat side that it will allow him to manage the left and the right-wing and hopefully be successful in getting things done that will move our country forward,” said Watts.
Kristin Myers is a reporter and anchor for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.
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