Biden the Incompetent

Back in July, CNN polling expert Harry Enten noticed something 
remarkable: President Biden’s job approval rating hadn’t budged 
during his first six months in office. This was good news for 
the White House. Unlike his predecessor, who never cracked 50 
percent approval in a major poll conducted during his 
presidency, Biden was somewhat popular. His numbers had neither 
gone higher than 55 percent nor sunk below 51 percent. “It’s 
been the most stable for any president since the end of World 
War II,” Enten wrote.

It didn’t last. Enten’s column appeared just as Biden’s approval 
rating began a downhill slide. According to FiveThirtyEight’s 
polling average, on July 26, Biden’s net approval was 10 points. 
Less than two months later, on September 13, his net approval 
was underwater at -3 points. In other words: By the time 
Americans returned from summer vacation, they had realized that 
Joe Biden’s version of “normalcy” isn’t what they’d had in mind. 
Maybe the sea breeze awakened their senses.

Pundits tried to explain how the president’s August went 
terribly wrong. Was it COVID-19, the economy, or Afghanistan? 
Try all the above. Biden is in trouble not because of his 
failures in any one crisis, but because of his general 
incompetence. His positive approval rating wasn’t merely the 
victim of unfortunate events. It vanished as the public watched 
Biden respond to those events—and flail.

Like bankruptcy, the 13-point swing against Biden happened in 
two stages: first gradually, then suddenly. It started like 
this. Biden’s numbers declined in early August as deaths from 
the Delta variant of the coronavirus increased at a geometric 
rate. At the same time, voters soured on the economy. Consumer 
pessimism wasn’t simply a function of virus-related capacity 
restrictions, mask requirements, labor shortages, and supply-
chain slowdowns. It was also a consequence of rising inflation.

“Spontaneous references to high prices for homes, vehicles, and 
household durables rose to its worst level since the all-time 
record in November 1974,” wrote Richard Curtin of the University 
of Michigan in a June consumer survey. “These unfavorable 
perceptions of market prices reduced overall buying attitudes 
for vehicles and homes to their lowest point since 1982.” For 
months, the White House and its allies dismissed inflation 
concerns as scaremongering. They said the rise in prices was 
only temporary. But “temporary” is now looking more like 
“indefinite.” And as consumer sentiment depreciated, so did 
Biden’s job approval.

Then came stage two of Biden’s collapse. His approval rating 
dropped dramatically in the catastrophic weeks after the Taliban 
stormed Kabul on August 15. Voters watched the botched American 
retreat with horror and disgust. They recoiled at the 
administration’s reliance on terrorists for security around 
Kabul Airport during the evacuation. They reacted with sadness 
and fury when terrorists killed 13 U.S. servicemen and at least 
60 Afghans. They couldn’t believe that the president left behind 
hundreds of American citizens, thousands of U.S. legal permanent 
residents, and tens of thousands of Afghan partners in the 20-
year war against Islamic militancy and al-Qaeda. According to 
FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s disapproval rating overtook his 
approval rating on August 30—the same day that the last U.S. 
troops left Afghanistan. As of this writing, he hasn’t recovered.

Will he? There is plenty of time before next year’s midterm 
elections for the public to reassess its views of the Biden 
presidency and put him above 50 percent approval once more. The 
best-case scenario for the White House looks like the following: 
The Delta wave passes, caseloads fall, and Americans forget 
about Biden’s farkakteh withdrawal from Afghanistan. The fading 
away of inflation would be nice, too. And if Democrats pull off 
the legislative logroll of the century and pass what the New 
York Times refers to euphemistically as a multitrillion-dollar 
“social policy bill,” voters may reward the creators of new 
entitlements to paid leave, universal pre-K, and two years of 
community college.

Still, there’s reason to doubt that Biden will regain his 
footing easily. There’s reason to believe he won’t defy historic 
precedent in 2022 by maintaining Democratic control of the House 
and Senate. That reason is Biden himself. Biden’s tough talk and 
bold plans are cover for a chief executive who’s just not very 
good at his job.

Nine months into office, the president has found it much easier 
to blame his predecessor and Republican governors for setbacks 
and mistakes than to change course and moderate his ambitions. 
The same man who said that “unity is our greatest strength” in a 
video marking the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, 
terrorist attacks turns around and points fingers at his 
political adversaries, leads a party whose congressional leaders 
are hankering to transform America, and oversees a Justice 
Department that seems to open another investigation into GOP 
state governments on each day that ends in “y.”

This administration’s haplessness and buck-passing touch every 
issue. Biden dismantled the Trump administration’s border-
security protocols and found himself unable to stanch record 
numbers of illegal crossings on the southern border. He 
delegated the border crisis to Vice President Kamala Harris, 
whose search for the “root causes” behind the surge in illegal 
immigration has taken her to Guatemala and Mexico and El Paso, 
but not anywhere close to a solution. Biden’s proposal to curb 
the rise in violent crime is to make it harder for law-abiding 
citizens to possess firearms—a non sequitur masquerading as 
action. Biden claims that inflation will subside when Congress 
passes his several-trillion-dollar spending plans and tax hikes, 
and OPEC gives in to his pleas to boost energy production. It’s 
hard to decide which is more shocking: His economic illiteracy 
or his willingness to return the United States to dependence on 
foreign oil.

Biden blamed Trump for an Afghan withdrawal deadline that he 
alone altered twice. Then he scolded the Afghan defense forces 
for melting away once he removed the close air support that the 
United States had provided for decades. Biden said that he 
withdrew U.S. forces from Afghanistan to protect the lives of 
U.S. troops. But more soldiers died in the August 26 attack at 
Kabul Airport than in any single day in Afghanistan since 2011. 
Biden said that despite our departure the United States will be 
able to combat al-Qaeda and ISIS in Afghanistan through an “over-
the-horizon” counterterrorism capability. But that horizon is 
far, far away: America has no bases in Central Asia, and 
Afghanistan is a landlocked nation surrounded by our enemies. 
Biden said that he wants to focus on competition with China. He 
hasn’t backed up his strident rhetoric with action.

Biden declared our “independence” from the coronavirus on July 
Fourth. Then he spent two and a half months dithering as the 
Delta wave spread havoc in the Southeast and Midwest. He went 
after governors who banned school mask mandates, but he didn’t 
announce a major slate of proposals to increase vaccinations and 
mitigate Delta until September 9—by which time the summer wave 
had peaked. Mr. Unity has yet to “shut down the virus” as 
promised. But he has given Americans plenty of additional things 
to fight over and complain about. “There’s little doubt that the 
honeymoon is over for Biden,” election analyst Amy Walter of the 
Cook Political Report wrote recently. “The question now is if 
voters are still going to be happy in the marriage come next 
year.”

Happy? At this rate, they’ll be filing for divorce.

https://www.commentary.org/articles/matthew-continetti/biden-
incompetent-leader/