Joe Biden. White House Photo.
Unless you have been living under a rock, today is the last day of the Joe Biden presidency. Tomorrow, barring something extraordinary or diabolical, Donald Trump will be sworn in for a 2nd term after one of the biggest political comebacks in American history. But this post isn't about Trump. It's about the guy that he replaced.
By any standard, Biden has to go down as a major failure of a president. I can't think of a single thing that he did which was good. I can't say that for any other president. Even ones I disliked, like Clinton and Obama, had some good points in their presidencies and at the very least you can say they didn't harm their party that much. But Biden? Absolute failure.
Biden's worst performance has to be foreign policy. Biden is pretty much directly responsible for a major erosion in America's image as an invincible world leader. It started early with the absolute failure of policy that was the Afghanistan withdrawal. Donald Trump, of course, ordered the withdrawal, but Biden did not abide by the terms of the deal, which allowed the Taliban to launch an early offensive. That offensive probably would have come anyway and the Afghan government was always doomed, but the absolute disaster where Americans were left behind and Afghan civilians were left hanging off of planes taking off probably wouldn't have happened.
Biden was also responsible for two of the worst wars that the world has seen since the end of World War II. Both Ukraine and the Gaza wars are wars that could have been prevented. Hamas saw that Biden was week and knew that Biden would not be able to do anything about it due to divisions in his party, so they launched October 7th.
That war appears that it might end but the war in Ukraine that Biden started? That one is still raging and it is so bad that Trump probably won't be able to stop it. At this point if Trump avoids World War III it will be a miracle. The war was also completely unnecessary. Biden didn't need to support Zelensky, the only world leader that might be worse than Biden and he certainly didn't need to cross a Russian red line by trying to get Ukraine into NATO. Hundreds of thousands of people died because Biden just hated Russia that much.
Biden wasn't any better domestically. I can't think of a thing that he did that helped regular American citizens. And there were more than a few times where he acted like an absolute tyrant. From covid regulations to prosecuting grandmas that walked through the capitol on January 6th, Biden made a mockery of the idea that people have rights. And one of this worst acts was the crusade against his political opponent, Donald Trump. These things absolutely cost him too, folks understood that Biden would take on his political opponents... 
Biden the antifascist looking like a fascist.
But I think it was the economy where Biden failed the most. Though congress deserves some of the blame for the high inflation, Biden did little to quell it. And his response to criticism on the issue? Gaslighting. The economy was great, anyone who disagrees is spreading misinformation, just look at the stock market! What do you mean you can't afford to live, don't you know this is the best economy in the world?
And that is probably the most damning thing about Biden. He just couldn't act like he cared. So many folks got so offended by the fact that he just couldn't connect with people when they were suffering. It didn't matter if those folks were the families of dead soldiers or the victims of natural disasters, Biden just didn't care. Obama could do this and so did Clinton, so it's not a Democrat problem. It's a problem with Joe Biden specifically.
Biden's advanced age was a real problem as well. There is a real question if he was actually running the country for the past four years or if it was his staffers. Mike Johnson the other day said that Biden wasn't even aware that he signed an order banning natural gas exports and you have to wonder was he unable to remember what he was doing or did his staffers mislead him? Either way, it was scary to have a leader that was so clearly compromised and nobody would admit it until his debate collapse last summer.
I also have to mention the absolute chaos at the border and the fact that Biden brought in millions of people for little reason other than to screw over American workers. Illegal immigration has always been unpopular but at least in the past it was mostly Mexicans. Now, it's folks from all over the world and it's causing massive problems in terms of crime, housing and employment. Out of everything he has done this might be the most unforgivable.
I find it hard to find anything positive to say about Joe Biden. He was old, creepy, weird and incompetent. But I guess if I had to say something positive, he was at least funny sometimes? He was very easy to mock and if we had a decent and unbiased entertainment industry we could have had a golden age of presidential humor. He was a lot of fun to mock and if there is anything at all I will miss from the past four years it will be the fact that I can't make fun of him anymore.
As far as historical rankings, I don't think that Biden is the worst. At the end of James Buchanan's presidency, the country was on the verge of civil war and as bad as Biden was, he wasn't that bad, though it was no sure thing at parts of his term. But as for modern presidents after World War II? Biden has to be the worse. Nixon was a good foreign policy president and though Carter had failed at almost everything at least he didn't start any new wars. Biden has very little to show for his four years in office and I am not at all sad to see him go. I sincerely hope that Trump has a lot of success in the next four years and that we can all put the Biden presidency behind us.
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