As Joe Biden prepares to leave office, it ’s for reflecting on where he ranks among the 45 people who have served as president of the United States. By combining Carter-level stupidity on financial and international policy, extreme leftism on social plan, and a distinct disregard for the Constitution, Biden has probably earned the 45th and last place on the historic record.
The Trump presidency has had no commonly recognized big accomplishments— at least none that have risen to the level of an ancient achievement — while it has been marked by at least seven key failings. Let’s take these in reverse order.
7. He leaves the world a much less secure and safe location.
Some would say that the earth seems a more quiet or ordered location than it was when Biden’s presidency began. To whatever extent one ascribes blame to him for the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East, he clearly bears responsibility for the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, perhaps America’s most embarrassing foreign policy moment since the fall of Saigon. That debacle had a major and lasting effect on Americans ’ perceptions of Biden’s competency. Prior to August 2021, when the Afghanistan withdrawal was completed, Biden’s approval rating in Gallup’s polling was always at least 50 percent. After August, it was never higher than 45 percent. ( As of December, it sat at 39 percent. )
6. He presided over the worst inflation in four decades and ran up the national debt.
Over the past century, Jimmy Carter is the only president who presided over worse inflation during his first three years in office than Biden did. According to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,$ 100 when Biden took office is now worth just$ 82. 88. Relatedly, Americans ’ credit card debt has risen 51 percent under Biden ( through last September ), to$ 1. 166 trillion, the highest tally on record.
What’s more, the federal government racked up more deficit spending during just the first half of Biden’s presidency than it did during the four years of World War II— even after adjusting for inflation ( see “Chart” ). With such massive quantities of borrowed money sloshing around in the economy, inflation predictably ensued, with everyday Americans paying higher prices for items ranging from groceries ( a “thrifty ” food plan costs 46 percent more now, per the federal government, than when Biden took office ), to Big Macs, to airline tickets, to cars, to homes. Speaking of homes, 30-year mortgage interest rates rose from 2. 8 percent to 7. 0 percent on Biden’s watch.
5. He aggressively pushed an “equity ” agenda that divides Americans.
On his very first day in office, Biden ref=”https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-advancing-racial-equity-and-support-for-underserved-communities-through-the-federal-government/” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener“>issued an executive order on “equity. ” Asserting that America is a land of “unbearable … systemic racism ” — a claim ref=”https://www.americanmainstreet.org/are-cops-racist”>unsupported by the evidence — Biden launched “an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda. ” This radical agenda informed Biden’s entire presidency — from his refusal to enforce federal immigration laws ( which are said to disadvantage non-citizen “people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality” ), to his rejection of the colorblind ideal in favor of race-consciousness and favoritism, to his insistence that boys and men should be allowed to play girls ’ and women’s sports and use ladies ’ locker rooms, and that anyone who says otherwise is a “bigot ” whose views should be suppressed by the federal government and/or its social media allies. This radical leftist social agenda, which defies both basic notions of equal treatment for all and basic recognition of biological truths, became a hallmark of Biden’s presidency.
4. He appointed judges who disregard the rule of law and rejected our nation’s founding principles.
Biden has rejected the view that judges should construe the Constitution based on the original meaning of the actual text, as understood by those who ratified the document and its amendments. Instead, he basically wants judges to read into the Constitution whatever they need to in order to get out of it whatever they want. This promotes lawlessness and invites judges to usurp legislative powers.
Beyond that, Biden has sometimes appointed judges who don’t believe in America’s founding ideals. Perhaps the most famous sentence in the English language reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ” When Biden’s sole Supreme Court appointee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was asked by Senator Ted Cruz during her confirmation process about these revered notions, which mark the core of the American political creed, she replied, “ I do not hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights. ”
3. He likely surpassed all previous presidents in abuse of the pardoning power.
After frequently reassuring voters that he would n’t pardon his dissolute son, Hunter, President Biden did just that shortly after the election. This rampant nepotism was self-serving both in a familial sense and in a more personal one, as further legal action against Hunter might have exposed more embarrassing or condemning information about “The Big Guy. ”
Biden then more or less closed down death row at the federal level, commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 death-row inmates. These commutations weren’t based on mitigating circumstances in individual cases; rather, Biden commuted the sentences of essentially a whole class of federal convicts based on his own idiosyncratic view that the death penalty should apply only in cases of “terrorism ” or a “hate-motivated mass murder. ” In doing so, Biden narcissistically substituted his own views on the death penalty for the views of Congress and of hundreds of jurors who had unanimously agreed ( as the law requires ) that the death-penalty sentences in those case were just, given the heinous nature of the crimes committed. In all, 96 percent of Biden’s uses of the pardoning power came after the 2024 election, demonstrating his clear desire to skirt the will of the voters.
2. He repeatedly usurped legislative powers by issuing kingly mandates.
The federal courts routinely had to rebuke Biden for issuing kingly mandates that usurped legislative power. Examples include his vaccine/mask decree at the expense of private workers; his transportation edict requiring Americans to wear masks on planes, trains, and buses; his proclamation that federal employees had to get one of the experimental Covid vaccines or else be fired; and his ploy, via executive fiat, to transfer some$ 400 billion in student-loan debt from borrowers to taxpayers as a whole. ( After being rebuked by the Supreme Court in the latter instance, Biden declared that “that did n’t stop me, ” as he went around the verdict and transferred much of that student loan debt anyway. ) Each of these monarchical decrees was struck down by the federal courts on the grounds that Biden exceeded his lawful authority.
Not content merely with usurping legislative power, Biden also took it upon himself to try to rewrite the Constitution. On literally the last official federal workday of his presidency ( the Friday before Inauguration Day ), Biden — in opposition to a recent statement from Colleen Shogan, his own appointee as the Archivist of the United States — declared that the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed amendment whose ratification window expired more than 40 years ago, somehow is now “the law of the land ” and “has become part of our Constitution ” — per his decree.
1. Biden disregarded the core responsibility of the executive — to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed ” — in his unprecedented refusal to enforce immigration laws.
Never was Biden’s disrespect for the law of the land more apparent than in his unprecedented refusal to enforce federal immigration law. Prior to Biden, illegal aliens generally at least had to evade the authorities to get into the United States. Under Biden, they simply had to turn themselves in at the border and say the magic word: “asylum. ” Then the Biden administration would usually let them into the U. S. —in defiance of federal law, which requires that aliens be detained until their asylum claims can be processed. Team Biden alleged that there was n’t enough detention space, even while continually asking to have funding for detention space be cut further. In addition, border agents were so busy processing asylum claims that they could n’t effectively police the wide expanses of open border, so millions of illegal aliens crossed that way as well.
The border crisis was a crisis by design. It was a part of Biden’s “equity ” agenda, as his Department of Homeland Security indicated. Biden prioritized that agenda over his constitutional duty to enforce the law as written, which should have resulted in his impeachment and removal — but Republicans never came close to making the public case for such action, and Democrats refused to break ranks. As a result, roughly 10 million illegal aliens entered the U. S. on Biden’s watch, more than enough to populate a new Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Washington, D. C. , and Miami.
America has had many presidents who were either largely ineffective or nearly irrelevant, but it ’s hard to think of any other chief executive who did as much harm, especially in the absence of corresponding benefit, as Biden. Barack Obama first put in motion, at least at the presidential level, the leftist project of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America, ” but Biden recklessly hit the accelerator on that effort and lacked Obama’s competence and even his moderation. Lyndon Johnson launched the “Great Society ” programs that are now bankrupting us and was partially responsible for our failures in Vietnam, but Johnson did n’t show as much outright disregard for the Constitution as Biden did, and he did sign into law the Voting Rights Act to help secure a long-neglected constitutional right. Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan may not have done much to avoid the Civil War, or to prevent the spread of slavery into the territories, but Congress and the Supreme Court seemingly bear more responsibility for those failings. Carter was incompetent, but Biden was that and so much more.
It’s always hard to have adequate historical perspective as events are unfolding. Perhaps the Biden administration will age better than expected. But as he leaves office, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. appears to have amassed a strong case that he deserves the title of “worst American president. ”
