The view from midfield
What the Biden administration looks like from the 50-yard line. It's less than great.
Eighteen months ago, as I stared at a ballot trying to decide who to vote for in the presidential election, I suspected that I was going to hate myself, a lot, either way. Marking that ballot was an act of abdication, rather than of choosing.
Being right about what was coming hasn't made it any easier to handle.
Joe Biden is a disaster. I am confident that he'll go down as a terrible modern president. The only reason that he may not go down as the worst modern president is because of competition from his predecessor, Donald Trump.
I've ranted before about how awful the choice was in the last presidential election. But I'm going to have to do it all over again right now to get it out of my system. When the best two candidates our political process can produce to lead the greatest nation on Earth are Joe Biden and Donald Trump, something is very wrong.
My hope was that Joe Biden would have the wisdom to know that he was elected almost solely because he was the only alternative to Donald Trump. Biden got elected because he was not Trump, not to be the next FDR.
But somehow Biden, his coterie of advisors, and the progressive wing of the Democrat Party have not gotten that memo. All that Biden had to do to enjoy approval ratings up around 50% and to consolidate, perhaps even improve, his party's grip on all levers of government power, was follow through on his promise to lead from the middle. Instead, Biden surrounded himself with advisors connected to the progressive left. This has yielded a string of unpopular policy decisions that are wildly out of step with the interests most Americans.
While it's true that Biden isn't solely responsible for all of what currently ails us, he's certainly a contributing factor. His low approval ratings are almost certainly a harbinger of things to come in November. But for the present, let's just ruminate on the here and now.
Let's start with inflation. Inflation was around 2% when President Biden was elected. It's now around 8%. Is Biden solely responsible for this? No, he is not. But he’s not making things any better.
From energy, to supply chains, to Covid - all of the incommodiousness that President Biden and the left like to blame for inflation, there lies a kernel of truth in the President's constant disclaimers. But each time the President has the opportunity to choose between exacerbating or ameliorating inflation, he's used executive actions, legislation with razor-in margins, and the bully pulpit, to choose the former.
When a blue president loses the Washington Post on an issue, to the degree of being accused of “magical thinking,” it's an indication of exactly how bad things have gotten.
Energy issues? Let's issue executive orders on day one to cripple domestic oil and gas production. Then let's slow-walk permitting for domestic production, while adding layers of oppressive new regulations to hinder what remains. Let's then attempt to solve the inevitable shortages by asking some of the worst regimes in the world: Russia, Iran and Venezuela, to sell us more oil.
Oops, I mean Iran and Venezuela.
Supply chain issues? At least some of this is based on transportation bottlenecks. Don't we have an entire Department of Transportation that, at least on paper, should be able to help with this? I guess they are too busy trying to engineer zero-fatality highways and eliminate racism in road construction, to help.
How about families of infants who currently cannot get infant formula? “Corporate greed!” Cry some Democrats. Not so fast.