Every president since George W. Bush has said it’s time to leave Afghanistan and turn to nation building at home.

But only Joe Biden is getting it done.

His huge gamble on more than $4.5 trillion in infrastructure spending and an exit from America’s longest war, which threatens to trigger a foreign policy disaster, are both unfolding in a dramatic August that could define his presidency. Alongside these twin historic pushes, the story of Biden’s administration is also being shaped by a resurgence of the pandemic that he thought he had beaten and is deepening the national political estrangement he vowed to heal.