Joe Biden has a few more weeks left in his epically failed presidency, but redemption seems well out of reach. After he issued a sweeping pardon for his son despite repeatedly claiming he never would, the book is all but closed on an administration with a record so appalling that everyone from his defenders-to-the-end to his fiercest enemies is left shaking their heads in disbelief. And as the country counts the days until his merciful departure from the White House, this episode serves as the linchpin for an entirely legitimate question.
Is Joe Biden the worst president in American history?
The country might have (or should have) known how ineffective and untruthful this Swampocrat from Delaware would be as leader of the Free World after multiple instances of plagiarism led him to bail out of the 1988 presidential campaign. Then, 20 years later, he failed to manage even 1% support in the single contest he entered in before dropping his second failed bid for the White House in 2008. He famously called future President Barack Obama “articulate and clean,” betraying a long history of insensitive racial remarks that ran entirely counter to his claims of being a reliable friend of black Americans. Somehow, Obama picked him as his running mate, kicking off a succession of events that, 16 years later, has left the Democratic Party in utter shambles.
How Could He Have Been Elected in the First Place?
In light of his record over four years in the White House, it is instructive to recount how Biden was even able to land in the Oval Office in the first place. It was already clear that he was suffering from noticeable cognitive decline during the 2020 presidential campaign, but the Trump-deranged big media ignored or denied it, signaling their willingness to do almost anything to clear his path to the presidency. It seemed that the toughest question posed to him during the campaign was about his favorite flavor of ice cream. The media engaged in see-no-evil by dismissing the hundreds of damning revelations about the Biden family’s corruption and influence-peddling in the infamous Hunter Biden laptop, with the aid of 51 former intelligence officials willing to advance a bald-faced lie by suggesting it was a classic case of Russian disinformation, even at the cost of eventually ruining their reputations.
As journalist Molly Ball shockingly admitted in her 2021 article “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election," a broad conspiracy was unleashed, led by the deeply embedded Washington establishment and featuring a previously unthinkable alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. Obsessed with removing Donald Trump at all costs, the conspirators gave little thought to how Biden might govern. He was simply not Trump, and that was enough.
The Biden Legacy Hits Rock Bottom
The media and Democrats who explained away Biden’s pronounced shortcomings, defended his many damaging decisions, and covered up his obvious cognitive issues over the entirety of his presidency are now abandoning ship. Just how far the 46th president has fallen is evidenced in a staggering assessment by anti-Trumper Bret Stephens in the left-wing newspaper of record, The New York Times, following the pardon that will live in infamy: “What a degrading finale for Biden’s feeble, forgettable, frequently foolish presidency.”
The sad truth is that it didn’t have to be this way. When he was handed the keys to the Oval Office, Biden could have, without much effort, followed through on his fundamental pledge to unite the American people and lower the temperature of a country on fire from the COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreak of widespread violence and cultural Marxism following the George Floyd affair in 2020. In his inaugural address, he repeatedly promised to do just that, only to turn up the heat by ominously labeling the millions who voted for Trump as extremists, fascists, and racists, culminating with his characterization of them as “garbage” days before the 2024 election.
He could have picked a viable running mate qualified to take the reins of power after him, especially since he suggested, for obvious reasons, that he would serve as just a transitional figure who would call it a day after one term. Instead, bowing to pressure from the most radical forces in the Democratic Party, he boxed himself in by first saying he would pick a woman and, later, a woman of color. He wound up selecting the only national figure who fit that exceedingly narrow profile, a woman who had crashed and burned in her bid for the White House before a single vote was cast in the 2020 primaries. Kamala Harris became a running joke, a punchline, until she was suddenly thrust to the top of the ticket, where, despite being propped up by the friendly media that served as cheerleaders, she failed so badly that a man almost nobody thought could ever return to power after 1/6/21 not only beat her but did so in sweeping fashion, becoming the first Republican in 20 years to win both the Electoral College and popular vote.
But the ultimate blame for Democrats’ electoral disaster cannot be pinned on Harris. She was a known quantity. It was not her fault that she was chosen to be vice president or that she was elevated to the top of the ticket only 107 days before Election Day. Biden could have triumphantly fulfilled his pledge not to seek a second term after the abortion-fueled 2022 midterms when Democrats overperformed. He could have collected credit for the twin accomplishments of taking down Trump and overseeing the strong showing by his party two years later, unleashing an open primary where a candidate far more electable than Harris would likely have been chosen by rank-and-file Democrats across the land. Instead, apparently enthralled by the trappings of power, he refused to step aside until it was too late, following the most embarrassing debate performance in recorded history. He then crippled his party’s chances by immediately endorsing Harris, short-circuiting a competition favored by party leaders to select a viable candidate.
The Border, Afghanistan, and Beyond
Like most newly elected presidents, Biden enjoyed a honeymoon that lasted for about six months, with his approval reaching the low 50s. He effectively opened the border to all comers by reflexively reversing Trump border policies that had dramatically reduced illegal immigration. But the American people would not rise in protest until much later in Biden’s term, when even the elite media could no longer ignore the disastrous consequences brought on by tens of thousands of criminal migrants flooding sanctuary cities, causing unspeakable harm to American citizens and to the budgets of mayors and governors who thought their virtue-signaling on illegal immigrants would come without cost.
Early in his administration, with the country already well into financial recovery after the pandemic, Biden pushed forward the massive $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan for an economy that had already been rescued. While honest economists warned that it could cause an inflationary spiral, Democrats passed the bill anyway. As with the southern border, the citizenry did not revolt until forecasts later proved accurate, and inflation spiked to a 40-year high of 9%. And while inflation cooled from that high-water mark, prices continued to soar for everything from groceries to gas and remained uncomfortably high for the remainder of his term. This drastic miscalculation was one of the most critical factors in Biden’s collapsing presidency.
In the summer of his first year in office came the disastrous decision from which Biden would never recover. And the remarkable thing is that he managed to botch something the American people strongly favored: withdrawing from the futile 20-year-long conflict in Afghanistan. Instead of removing American troops at the end of the withdrawal, seemingly an obvious decision based on simple common sense, he pulled the troops out first, setting off a humiliating episode that resulted in the deaths of 13 Americans, the forfeiture of $80 billion in military hardware, and the sense that Biden was disturbingly incompetent. The ultimate gut punch was watching the Taliban parade the very weapons the president left behind for all the world to see.
All the while, Russian President Vladimir Putin was testing Biden’s resolve with a well-documented buildup of troops along the Ukrainian border. However, not only did Biden refuse to respond, he stated he would not do anything if the Russians engaged in a “minor incursion” into Ukraine. Four years later, the entirely predictable war has led to a death toll reaching a staggering 500,000, according to The New York Times.
Meanwhile, Biden blindly reinstated a version of the Iran nuclear deal first signed by Obama. The downright evil Iranian regime, all but bankrupted when Trump canceled Obama’s deal and applied crippling sanctions, was monetized afresh. Soon, its proxy Hamas unleashed a merciless assault, slaughtering 1,400 innocent Israeli citizens, evidently confident that Biden would not respond with strength. And he didn’t, issuing conflicting and ambiguous statements alternately criticizing Israel and Hamas. Iran’s other proxies have followed suit with relentless attacks, turning this perpetual hot spot on the globe into a boiling cauldron.
After four years under Trump with no new wars, Biden’s abject fecklessness on the world stage has led to catastrophic consequences in Afghanistan, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. As the world moves closer to World War III than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis 62 years ago, those who defended him in 2020 and beyond could have a lot to answer for in the future.
History’s Worst Presidents
For many years, presidential historians have ranked the best and worst of American presidents, but those rankings are ripe with subjectivity and must be taken with more than a grain of salt. While few would argue with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln heading the list of best chief executives, the president widely believed by regular citizens to be the worst, or most ineffective, in modern times would be Jimmy Carter, who served one term before losing in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in his bid for re-election.
But US News and World Report, among the organizations that have issued presidential rankings in recent decades, ranks Carter as only the 21st worst president in history. George W. Bush is ranked as 12th worst, Richard Nixon as 14th worst, Gerald Ford as 19th worst – and Trump as 3rd worst in the entire history of the country, behind only the pre- and post-Civil War presidencies of James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. Notice how, unsurprisingly, the four modern-day presidents ranked as inferior to Carter are all Republicans. This demonstrates the inherent liberal bias among these presidential historians – like Allan Lichtman, whose “13 keys” produced a dead-wrong prediction of the 2024 election. So don’t expect Biden to head the list, though those who have lived through the last four years might well beg to differ.
Perhaps the fitting epitaph for Biden was uttered by Obama, who refused to endorse his vice president in 2016. Years ago, Obama famously told a Democratic colleague: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f–k things up.”
