| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. President Joe Biden received, and deserved, a fair amount of ridicule for his less-than-ambitious coronavirus vaccination goals during his first 100 days in office (I contributed on Twitter). Both his initial goal of delivering 100 million shots and his subsequent upward revisions only required existing trends to continue during a period in which more vaccine was becoming available. Biden and his administration deserve plenty of credit for the vaccine rollout, but the public goals were … sort of silly. Granted, it's always smart for presidents to establish goals that they know they can meet, but this was a little too much underpromising. That said, things certainly could have gone wrong, and by all accounts the new administration did an excellent job of getting shots into arms during the period in which where were a lot of eager arms. The U.S. is past that now, with 248 million doses administered, and Biden has set a new target — at least one shot to 70% of all adults by July 4. And this time, he's not lowballing. As the health-care policy specialist Larry Levitt tweeted on Tuesday: "Reaching 70% of adults with at least one Covid-19 vaccine shot by July 4th is a worthy goal. It's not going to be at all easy to achieve." The pace has slowed by a bit in the last two weeks, as most of those (like, say, myself) who would gladly drive 100 miles to get the shot at 3 a.m. have already had their turns. (I actually only had to drive 60 miles, and my appointment was at 3 in the afternoon.) I'll leave it to others to discuss the specifics of convincing the reluctant or indifferent, other than to say that it's pretty clear it's a complicated problem with multiple solutions needed for various different groups — and that it's further complicated for Biden in that it's Republican states that have the lowest participation rates. That doesn't mean that those who haven't had a shot yet are all MAGA anti-vaxxers. Some are, but only a relatively small percentage of the entire population tell pollsters they will never get the vaccine. What it does mean, however, is that many of those who are still waiting aren't apt to take advice from Biden — and that the state governments in those areas are less likely to work with him, especially if it means doing it in public. But the question I have is: Why the ambitious goal now? Isn't Biden risking an unnecessary defeat that he could avoid by lowballing again? Here's my guess at what went into the decision. On the one hand, Biden is probably less in need of wins over the next two months than he was when he set those earlier targets. The "100 days" convention may be foolish — presidency scholars seem to hate it a lot — but Biden knew that news organizations were going to be evaluating him at the end of April, and that the more items he could put into the win column, the better. Now, the next big group of media roundups won't show up until the one-year mark. If Biden falls short of 70% by July 4, reporters will notice, but they won't give it the kind of coverage that falling short during the 100 days would have gotten. And by the time those Year One stories roll around, presumably the 70% benchmark will have long since been achieved, and no one will care if that happened a few weeks late. Moreover, to the extent the administration has now established a reputation for competence, it can probably withstand falling a bit short if that's what happens. It helps that Biden can probably expect plenty of good economic news over the next few months, so he'll have stuff to trumpet either way. And too much lowballing does have its own risks; setting a more difficult goal on this one will give him a bit more room to lowball something else. Meanwhile, setting an aggressive goal has advantages. Goals publicly stated by the president put the government on notice; that helps activate the bureaucracy and pressure civil servants to achieve what the president wants. In theory, everyone who works in the U.S. government wants to defeat the pandemic. But in practice, bureaucrats are wary about trying new things, worried about others encroaching on their jurisdiction, and prone to ignoring the president when they can get away with it. Public pressure makes all of that harder, and therefore should make maximizing vaccinations more likely. Of course, all of those factors were at play during the first 100 days as well. But perhaps the overall balance of arguments made those advantages less important — and perhaps the actual tasks that need to be done now need more bureaucratic buy-in. Or maybe Biden is just getting better at his job. 1. Lynn Vavreck on incentives to get vaccinated. 2. Jonathan Hoffman at the Monkey Cage on surprising nations that tolerate China's persecution of the Uyghurs. 3. Heidi Shierholz on the possibility of a U.S. labor shortage. 4. Marc Ambinder on Facebook bans. 5. Mark Blumenthal on polling about vaccinations. 6. And here at Bloomberg Opinion, Max Stier makes the case for reducing the number of government appointees who need Senate confirmation. I mostly disagree, so be sure to read Stier; I probably have the minority opinion on this one. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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