Joe Biden, a Presidential Success Story

On Taking the Shine Off the Apple

If President Biden has been as successful as he claims, why isn’t the public behind him more? A lot, of course, can be blamed on polarization. Partisans will automatically oppose the other party, emphasize the WSJ. That accounts for 40 percentage points of Biden’s disapproval numbers, but what has brought on the additional 16 percentage points?

A Coast-to-Coast Jamboree

Biden himself is in line to take much of the blame, continues the WSJ. His first two years have been a partisan jamboree:

• Jamming through Congress trillions of dollars in new spending with narrow majorities.
• Using regulation to impose the progressive priorities of racial division and climate alarmism, often without proper legal authority.
• The Supreme Court rebuked him on vaccine mandates and a national eviction moratorium, and it will likely do so again on student-loan forgiveness.

Critics called Trump’s governing “divisive.” How, then, to justify Joe Biden referring to a Georgia voting law as “Jim Crow 2.0” before accusing Republicans of being the equivalent of Bull Connor? Republicans believe in “semi-fascism,” said Biden, before declaring that those who want to use the debt ceiling as leverage to reduce spending represent “chaos and catastrophe.”

Where are the benefits of Biden’s legislative victories? So much for what President Joe Biden promised:

• The $1.9 trillion Covid bill in March 2021 added so much cash to the economy that it helped to trigger an historic inflation. The result is that most Americans haven’t had a raise in their income after inflation in two years. This takes a shine off the low unemployment rate every time people hit the grocery store. They can see that the nearly $500 billion in spending and tax subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 had nothing at all to do with reducing inflation.
• A fraying social consensus that has Americans worried about the country. Crime may not be as high as it was in the 1990s, but it has risen sharply in big cities.
• The record migrant surge across the border would be less worrisome if Mr. Biden seemed to care about stopping it.
• The fentanyl scourge isn’t Biden’s fault, but its breadth betrays a troubling decay in values.
• Americans can see that the world is becoming more dangerous and its rogues more brazen.
• Biden has done a good, if often belated, job of arming Ukraine, but he failed to deter Vladimir Putin.
• China has become less bellicose of late but no less aggressive in its actions, as its spy balloon provocation shows.
• Iran continues to advance its nuclear program despite U.S. and allied protests.

There’s ample reason, writes the editors of the WSJ, for voters to be skeptical of Mr. Biden’s expansive claims of presidential success.