Four years ago on these pages, I provided a review of Donald Trump’s first year as president. I think it’s appropriate that I do the same for Joe Biden, though in his case, it will be a 15-month review. A fair warning: The additional three months have not done Biden any favors.
As we all know, Biden emerged from a mediocre field that included such notables as Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar. His eventual VP pick, Kamala Harris actually dropped out before the primary voting started; you needed a microscope to spot her poll numbers. The only real challenger to Joe was Bernie Sanders, again eschewed by his own party as too radical to emerge victorious in a national election. Thus, we got good old Uncle Joe, and after multiple previous attempts over the years, he stuck as the Democrat candidate for the office of president.
While campaigning (if you could call it that based upon his infrequent sightings and few departures from his Delaware basement), Biden did so as a “moderate.” Well, so goes the general belief. Saying multiple times, he’d eliminate fossil fuels completely is hardly a moderate position. Additionally, Biden also endorsed defunding police departments multiple times. None of this bode well, but some questionable voting procedures, the media’s burying of son Hunter’s ongoing alleged grift, and Google’s alleged algorithm bias all worked to pull Joe over the finish line. So here we are.
It’s difficult to find any accomplishments in Biden’s tenure so far that have been beneficial to the American people, though the pom-pom wavers in the media can point to a couple of instances: They tout the job numbers, though a closer look will find that the jobs “created” by the Biden administration are actually jobs that existed pre-COVID and are now being filled as folks who were happy to enjoy the expiring government largesse, find they need their income back. The $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package that passed early in his tenure and Biden still keeps touting, is now widely blamed for jump starting the massive inflation we find ourselves in today. Federal Reserve analysts estimate that Biden’s flood of handouts have added at least three percent to the inflation numbers, according to the New York Post.
In fact, Biden claimed that the rescue package put “America in a position to tackle a worldwide problem that’s worse everywhere but here: inflation,” as seen on nypost.com. The reality is that our inflation numbers are significantly worse than many countries, including South Korea, Australia, and Canada. Just one of Biden’s many lies as he and his lackeys find themselves in damage control mode.
As far as inflation is concerned, Biden has flip-flopped between saying that there’s really nothing he can do, to blaming, in no particular order: Vladimir Putin, GOP policies, oil producers and individual gas station owners (!). Shameless.
As we all know, Biden shut down the Keystone Pipeline in his first day in office. This was both a symbolic and a tactical decision. The message was sent. Sent with extreme prejudice. The U.S. is “transitioning” (his word) out of the fossil fuel business. No more investment in drilling and production. So, we are now back to importing oil from our enemies, a practice that ended under Trump. Despite recent gas prices that topped $5 a gallon, Biden has refused to enable U.S. oil production, as he panders to the extreme left of his party.
His foreign policy gaffes are numerous, but the bungling of the Afghanistan withdrawal that left hundreds of Americans and American allies behind, as well as millions of dollars of military equipment in the hands of our enemies, is probably his coup-de-grace. Ignoring his military advisors for the sake of meeting a self imposed, arbitrary deadline was dangerous and amateurish. Additionally, we keep pumping billions into Ukraine in order to keep them afloat with no end in sight. Are we looking to help them win? Survive? Negotiate? We don’t know. Biden has never effectively articulated the U.S. position other than to utter, “we are defending Democracy” platitudes.
As bad as his policies have been, his infrequent public speaking appearances have been nothing short of an embarrassment. From mumbling through messaging, to reading stage instructions off the teleprompter, to needing crib notes telling him where to sit, the Leader of the Free World appears feeble at best, and often infantile. He often refers to his handlers as the people who won’t let him speak or answer questions. He goes back and forth between almost deranged and unnecessary yelling, to creepy and equally deranged whispering. How is this meant to be an effective communication style? And how do his myriad handlers and advisors not address this with him? They must know it embarrasses their boss, right? Right?
According to the Washington Examiner, through May of 2022, Biden already spent 188 full or partial days away from the White House, putting him on pace to spend 553 days away during his first term. This is an astounding number; no prior president comes close. It’s more than just bad optics, folks. This is a sign of a President who has basically “retired in place.” And the American people are paying attention.
Biden’s poll numbers have been a major news story for some time. They are alarmingly low in almost every category. His lower than low poll numbers for Latinos, who are deserting the Democrat Party in droves, are a cause of concern for Democrats. A July 2022 New York Times/Siena College Research Institute polling showed that only 26 percent of Democrats want him to run again. As he looks to avoid lame duck status, he continues to assert that he will run in 2024. No one in their right mind actually believes that will happen. He will be 82 years old in 2024 and will have even less to offer the American people than he does today.
Dr. Otto Hernandez is a political commentator and a lifelong educator.