A Biden Burden

Joe Biden’s approval rating stands at 39.5 per cent while 55.3 per cent disapprove of his cumulative actions and policies while in the White House. All six presidents who preceded him had higher approval ratings in the last months they were in office: Donald Trump 42 per cent, Obama 51 per cent, George W. Bush 49.9 per cent, Bill Clinton 59 per cent, George H.W. Bush 45 per cent and Ronald Reagan 61.7 per cent, according to fivethirtyeight.com. Biden’s approval rating hovered in the lower 40s most of the time.

He and George H.W. Bush were one-term presidents. Biden was inaugurated at the age of 78, making him the oldest president ever. He has spent his entire career in politics – 36 years as a senator from the small state of Delaware, eight years as vice president, and nearly four as president. While he initially promised to be a one-term transitional president, he announced his intention to run for a second term in April 2023 and was compelled to withdraw on July 24th this year after a disastrous performance in a televised debate with Trump.

Biden is the eighth sitting president and the first since 1968 when Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the race. Biden has become a lame duck who can accomplish very little during his remaining four months in the White House. He is also a burden to Vice President Kamala Harris who has unexpectedly and belatedly stepped into the contest as the Democratic party’s candidate.

During his time in office, Biden had significant successes on the home front. He promoted a trillion-dollar relief plan to help the country recover from the covid pandemic and recession. He signed bipartisan bills on infrastructure and manufacturing and proposed a major act to boost employment and tackle climate change. While the measure was not accepted by Congress as a whole, key aspects were implemented. Biden appointed a progressive to the Supreme Court and returned the US to international agreements from which “America First” Trump had withdrawn. Despite this record, Biden has been blamed for inflation – which he has brought down – and the economic woes of the middle and working classes.

On the foreign front, Biden has been a disaster and has done a great deal of damage. During his campaign for the presidency he pledged to return the US to the 2015 agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for lifting sanctions which have crippled Iran’s economy. Serving and former US diplomats and officials expected him to return to the nuclear deal as soon as he took office. Instead, Biden prevaricated and procrastinated and essentially stuck to the negative Trump policy.

Trump withdrew the US from the accord in 2018, prompting Iran to enrich uranium to the 60 per cent level of purity short of the 90 per cent needed for weapons, develop advanced centrifuges for enrichment, and amass a large stockpile of enriched uranium. If Biden had honoured his pledge, Iran’s nuclear programme and research would have been curtailed and tightly monitored, sanctions relief could have grown its economy, and Iran could have been reinstated in the international community. This could have encouraged Iran’s clerics to initiate reforms, loosen controls on the social and cultural behaviour of Iranians, and play a positive role in the region. Instead, Iran is plagued with mismanage-ment and corruption, clamps down hard on dissidents, and is accused of destabilising the region.

Biden also followed Trump’s plan for the staged US withdrawal of troops from Afghani-stan during 2021. At the end of this term, Trump signed an agreement for the pull out in exchange for a Taliban commitment not to allow Daesh to base itself or operate from Afghan territory. This was a no brainer this was in the Taliban’s interest to do both as Daesh is a competitor. While Trump agreed to complete the US withdrawal By May and ran down the number of troops to 2,500, Biden postponed departure until August so that he could be hailed by the US public for ending the US deployment in that distant and dangerous country by September 11th, the 20th anniversary of Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York and Washington. Since there was no commitment from the Taliban to behave decently with Afghans, particularly, women, the Taliban simply waited patiently to take over unopposed. Although the Pentagon had eight months to plan an organised exit, the US departure was chaotic. US-allied Afghans seeking to escape the Taliban flocked to Kabul’s airport but were left behind to face death or imprisonment. Back in power, the Taliban has systematically denied women of secondary and university education, employment, access to public places, and lately, the right for their voices to be heard outside their homes.

Instead of urging Ukraine to reach a deal with Russia over Moscow’s vehement refusal to countenance that country’s bid for NATO membership, Biden, ex-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg encouraged Ukraine to press on with its application. In late 2021, Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s border and, when Kyiv did not take Moscow’s threat seriously, Russian troops crossed into Ukraine in February 2022. The US alone has provided Ukraine with $174 billion in weapons to fight this proxy war which Ukraine is unlikely to win.

Since October 7th last year, Biden has provided arms and political support for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s war on Gaza which has killed more than 41,500 people and wounded 95,000, of whom 70 per cent are women and children. Gazans have been starved of food and medicine while Gaza has been transformed into a wasteland. Nevertheless, Biden refused to call for a ceasefire until May 31st but by that time Netanyahu added conditions unacceptable to Hamas to the Biden-Security Council deal. Negotiations mediated by Egypt and Qatar have stalled. Biden has refused to halt or pause arms supplies and political backing for Israel to compel Netanyahu to agree to a Gaza ceasefire. After enjoying 11 months of freedom to wage war in Gaza as he pleases, Netanyahu is out of control and preparing to attack Lebanon to eliminate Hizbollah.

When he steps down, Biden will leave the world a legacy of blood and tears.

Photo: TNS