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Biden’s Report Card
By Nayyer Ali MD
President Joe Biden has a few days left in the White House, and so it is fitting to render a judgment on his one-term Presidency. Biden entered office with the country in the grip of a viral pandemic that had killed several hundred thousand people and left the rest of us wearing masks. Millions were also unemployed, the US had failed to act on global warming, and our democratic allies were jittery about Trump’s hesitancy to support the pillars of the postwar order.
Biden achieved a series of impressive foreign policy and legislative wins despite very narrow majorities in both the House and Senate. He passed the American Rescue Plan on a party-line vote in less than six weeks that authorized 1.9 trillion dollars in spending to fight the slump induced by the pandemic. This massive burst of spending did what it was supposed to do, stimulate the economy. The US roared over the next 4 years, with the economy growing 13% over the next four years, and 10% per capita. This is in real terms, meaning after accounting for inflation. Compared to every other advanced economy it was the best performance by far.
But the growth came at a price. As consumers rushed back to spend, supply chains became snarled, and workers who had been willing to work at lower wages before the pandemic demanded higher pay even at the lowest end of the job spectrum, such as food service as hospitality work. The result was a burst of inflation that began in the summer of 2021 and lasted till the end of 2023, with average prices rising 20%. After decades of 2% or less inflation per year, this came as a shock to the average American. Inflation was just as bad in other nations, but that was likely due to their being more susceptible to the price effects of Russia’s war on Ukraine that began in early 2022.
Most economists now agree that Biden’s rescue plan was probably too big. Certainly, American voters thought so, as Biden’s approval rating sagged below 40%, and Democrats struggled in the 2024 election, ultimately with Trump regaining the White House with a very narrow margin, beating Harris by 1.5% of the popular vote.
Biden achieved other major legislative wins. The CHIPS Act has been a success in bringing leading edge computer chip production back to American shores. The Infrastructure Bill passed with Republican support, will spend over a trillion dollars modernizing roads, bridges, ports, and other critical transportation nodes. Biden also got Congress to pass an update to the Electoral Count Act, eliminating the loophole that Trump tried to exploit to hold on to power through a rogue Vice-President, a role that thankfully Mike Pence refused to play. Biden also rejoined the Paris Climate Accords and passed a party-line bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, that poured almost a trillion dollars into accelerating the American economy's transition to net zero carbon. US emissions have been falling for 20 years, but the whole world needs to develop energy systems that are not just low in carbon emissions but are zero emissions. It is up to the richest countries to spend the money to develop the technologies that will get us there. Already US capacity to build solar panels has tripled, to almost 40 gigawatts per year, and electric vehicle sales continue to rise sharply.
In foreign policy, Biden got most of the big issues correct. He restored the American commitment to its allies and in particular to NATO. He kept the US out of any new wars. He did complete the exit from Afghanistan that Trump had negotiated, but that was in fact a mistake. Leaving Afghanistan was going to mean a Taliban takeover, and that was going to be a disaster for the people of Afghanistan, particularly its women. The Taliban’s actions since then have only confirmed it. Biden judged rightly that the US no longer had any major national interest in sustaining the Afghan government, but it required only a small US commitment and a willingness to deploy air power to keep the Taliban at bay. Once the decision to leave was made, there was no way to avoid a chaotic exit, nor to plan a better one.
Biden’s biggest failures have been in Ukraine and Gaza. In Ukraine, the Biden team did correctly warn the world in advance that Putin was going to invade, even though such an act seemed absurd and pointless. And once the invasion began, the Biden team did provide critical weapons and intelligence that allowed Ukraine to repel the initial invasion. But since then, Biden has fumbled the ball. He has not been willing to provide Ukraine with the level and type of assistance it needs to win the war, and he has placed sharp limits on the use of American missiles and artillery against targets within Russia, even though that is where the attacks against Ukraine are coming from. American fears that this would result in Putin using nuclear weapons are overblown. The Ukrainians are not going to march on Moscow, just recapture their own land.
Despite his lukewarm support, the Ukrainians have done a stunning job of dismantling Russia’s war machine. Almost the entire standing army it had in 2022 has been destroyed. Russia is now fighting with old Soviet equipment it is dragging out of storage. Western sanctions have severely weakened Russia’s economy. Even though Trump has been completely unfriendly to Ukraine, the Europeans will continue to provide aid. On his way out the door, Biden has also given Ukraine 20 billion dollars, along with 30 billion from the EU, funded by frozen Russian assets (over 300 billion dollars of Russian assets held in the West were frozen after Putin launched his war, the interest those assets earn are not credited to Russia as long as the underlying assets are frozen). This cash aid cannot be used for weapons, but it goes a long way to funding other critical spending needs of the Ukrainian government while it tries to fight a war.
Biden’s other failure has been Gaza. Hamas broke the ceasefire in place for the last several years by launching a terror raid on October 7, 2023, that killed over a thousand Israeli civilians and seized over a hundred hostages. Israel responded in a brutal and relentless manner. The end result has been that Hamas has seen most of its military capacity destroyed and its leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, killed. About 20,000 Hamas gunmen have died. But so have over 20,000 Gazan civilians, with 2 million essentially turned into refugees as they move back and forth in the tiny Gaza Strip to avoid the fighting. Hamas must take the blame for this reckless act that triggered the subsequent carnage. But Biden has done little to change the logic of the Middle East and Israeli policy that created this problem in the first place. The underlying issue is the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian people and the apartheid state they find themselves under. Israel’s defenders like to speak of it as a democracy, and point to its non-Jewish citizens who can vote as proof that Israel is a liberal democracy like other Western nations. But that is a half-truth. Israel also rules over 5 million non-citizen Palestinians whose lives are completely analogous to apartheid South Africa. In fact, at least in South Africa the Blacks had citizenship, which is not the case in Israel.
Biden should have taken the opportunity of this war to push for a two-state solution and a comprehensive peace between the Arab states and Israel. Biden should have made clear to Netanyahu that US support for his war on Hamas would be contingent on a meaningful, realistic, and timely path to creating a Palestinian state. As of now, all the big questions about Gaza remain unanswered. When and how does this war end? Who rules Gaza afterward? Will Israel withdraw or will it keep its army in Gaza? Who pays for Gaza’s reconstruction? What is the path to finally ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Biden’s complete lack of action on any of these critical questions amounts to a major failure.
The other issue that Biden has not addressed is the upheaval in Syria. The Syrians themselves have not worked for their own future. But Biden should lift the sanctions on Syria, at least temporarily, so that serious reconstruction work can begin, and outside investors can enter.
While Biden’s overall record has been positive, though not unblemished, he also failed at his most important job. Not just beating Trump in 2020, but ensuring that the Democrats kept the White House in 2024 and Trump did not return to power. Biden failed for two reasons. First, he appointed a weak Attorney General in Merrick Garland, who failed to aggressively prosecute Trump for a series of illegal acts, from the January 6 coup attempt to his keeping of National Security Top Secret documents in his bathroom at Mar-A-Lago. Because the wheels of justice grind so slowly, and due to interference to help Trump out coming from the Supreme Court, Trump was able to run out the clock on his legal woes and was able to stand for reelection in 2024. Biden also failed to look at what he saw in the mirror honestly. By 2022 it was clear that he was just too old and infirm to continue in the office till 2028. His speech was slowed, and his gait was halting. Though only two years younger, Trump appeared far more vigorous. Biden embarrassed himself so badly at his debate with Trump in June 2024 that he had to drop out of the race. Far better if he had done so in 2023 and allowed the Democratic Party to have a real primary. It may have put up a far better candidate who did not have the baggage of the Biden Administration to answer for. Given how close the election was, just moving the electorate by 1-2 percent would have kept Trump out of the White House.
Trump now enters office in many ways diminished from the figure he was in 2016. He can only serve 4 years, and the last two he will be a lame duck with little clout left in politics. To the extent that he can achieve anything of substance domestically, he must do so in the next few months. But with a 1-2 seat edge in the House, it may be impossible for him to pass any significant legislation that does not have Democratic support. In 2026 he will almost certainly lose the House.
Where Trump could make his mark is foreign policy. He has already threatened Hamas repeatedly if it doesn’t release all of its hostages before he takes office. But Hamas is impervious to Trump’s bluster and will call his bluff. Trump is going to pull back on support for Ukraine, but he doesn’t have the leverage to force Ukraine to actually surrender to Putin’s demands. So far Trump seems more preoccupied with buying Greenland and somehow convincing Canadians they should merge with the US. Both are hallucinatory. If Trump does want to use the American military, the most likely target will be strikes on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Or he might just greenlight Israel to attack Iran and leave the US out of any direct combat.
