High-inflation rates, low approval scores and awkward speech gaffes put the 46th president’s time in office ahead of his predecessors.
Opinion by Asher Miles, Staff Writer
The millennial generation has not witnessed a better president than Joseph R. Biden… unfortunately.
The majority of recent American presidents have had abysmal presidential runs. Bill Clinton aided in ushering a new era of mass incarceration of Black men through the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill.
George W. Bush boosted American morale after 9/11, yet his subsequent ordering of the 2003 invasion of Iraq paired with his active pursuit in deregulating the financial sector culminated into the biggest financial and economic meltdown since the Great Depression.
Barack Obama’s presidency could have placated Americans' idealistic beliefs of hope and change. The Deporter in Chief’s expansionist policies, dramatic increase of the armed drones program coupled with the ill-regard for the sovereignty of those bombarded countries, left much to be desired.
According to C-SPAN and Sienna College Research Institute, Donald Trump, respectively, averages out at being ranked 44 out of 46 presidents. This is clear to the naked eye when a president signs a tax reform that provides 83 percent of the benefits to the most well-off of the top 1 percent (according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center), What else could Americans expect from his ranking?
Therefore, the bar is quite low for “sleepy Joe”.
Detractors who believe that “Brandon” is an envoy of radical Marxist socialism are incorrect. Clearly they have microscopic hamsters perpetually running on a wheel in their skulls. In reality, the 46th president career has revealed him as a custodian for neoliberalism, that is, he continuously embarrassed an ideology that view citizens as consumers and emphasizes the free-market capitalism.
From the onset of his presidency, Biden consistently performed half measures, ranging from not providing $2,000 stimulus checks — as he stated he would during his 2020 run— to his inability to persuade or play hardball with conservatives to pass his Build Back Better Plan. When railroad workers were on strike for paid sick leave, Biden had no problem crushing their efforts.
But, neoliberal democrats at least have a pulse on the country compared to the republican party.
The $1.9 trillion Covid Relief Deal temporarily extended unemployment support as well as extended the Child Tax Credit, which provided major tax relief for nearly all working families. Also, his passage of the Chips Acts brought the production of America's fourth largest import, semiconductors, back to the United States.
However, the 80-year-old president’s gumption fails with his attempts in strong-arming his opposition to fulfill his desires.
He consistently takes the fall for mishaps that are out of his control such as the high rate of inflation and Silicon Valley Bank failing. Maybe he thinks that Americans would be smart enough to know that Trump’s 2018 tax plan deregulated banks to the extent where they did not have to report tests that determined whether a bank held enough capital to withstand a negative economic shock. Or, maybe he trusted Americans' capability to understand that the bank’s bond-heavy portfolio was a risky investment (particularly with high interest rates) as tech millionaires performed a bank run that resulted in the second biggest bank failure in American history.
Dark Brandon is not Bernie Sanders in a Joseph Biden face mask. If anything he is a puppet for conservatives to launch nonsensical jabs at, as well as a puppet for the left to constantly prod for more. Ironically, though, the puppet is doing better than his predecessors.