Biden’s Year of Failure

Of all the many unbidden iniquities that have dogged President Biden since he took office, perhaps the most unjust of all is that bad things keep happening to the man after he has done something stupid. The phenomenon has been near Newtonian in its consistency. The president blows the Afghanistan withdrawal; his poll numbers crater in response. The president chases an agenda that he knows lacks the requisite votes; that agenda goes down in flames. The president issues an order that he’s acknowledged as a violation of the law; that order is nixed by the Supreme Court. The president terrifies a close ally; that ally expresses its disgust. And on and on it goes, as if gravity itself were in play. Action, meet reaction, meet the falling of the sword of Damocles.

Biden’s apologists like to excuse their charge’s shortcomings by pointing to the poisoned chalice he was handed. And, sure enough, this president did inherit an unenviable landscape. On the day that Biden became president, Covid was still raging, inflation was beginning to materialize, the global supply chain was showing signs of interruption, crime was on the rise, and the debt had hit record levels. The trouble is, Biden has been president for a full year and Covid is still raging, inflation is now at its highest level since 1982, the global supply chain remains interrupted, and crime, somehow, has worsened. As for the national debt? We are worse off than ever before.