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I anticipated the Biden presidency with great trepidation. On the campaign trail—or at least in the primary and presidential debates, as he really didn’t campaign in the usual sense—he appeared to be weak, mentally and physically, an ideal Trojan horse for the leftist radicals in his party to smuggle in their preferred policies. He pandered to their dreams of open borders and a Green New Deal, and he repeated their mantra that the U.S. was plagued by “systemic racism,” a term undefined and incapable of being defined in any way recognizable as racist. He jumped on his party’s identity politics bandwagon. And, of course, he told quite consequential and provable lies—such as that Donald Trump had praised Nazis in Charlottesville, or that he, Biden, knew nothing of Hunter’s business dealings in the Ukraine and China, much less that he himself was involved in the China deals.
Still, we were told that Biden was a moderate, a unifier, a bipartisan compromiser. He was just good-old, backslapping, women-hugging Joe, an old-time professional pol who might occasionally have a strained relationship with the truth—a couple of bouts of plagiarism, perhaps, but generally just a harmless fabulist—but surely not an ideological or a calculating, mean-spirited liar. There was hope that the Biden we saw vying for the presidency would be different from the Biden we would see having won the presidency.
Unfortunately, that has not been the case. If anything, Biden as president has been worse than Biden as candidate. Here is his first one hundred days report card.
First, the good grade (though the only one). Biden’s team has managed the vaccine rollout fairly effectively, building on the foundation the Trump administration laid. He deserves credit for that, though he would deserve more had he expressed some gratitude for the near-miraculous success of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed in producing vaccines in a matter of months.
Thanking Trump, whom most of his party reviles, would have shown some class; but I guess presidents thanking the good works of their predecessors in the opposing party, or at least not heaping scorn on those predecessors, is an act of presidential class that disappeared after George W. Bush.
Now for the failing grades. Biden has taken the poison of identity politics to an extreme. Almost every presidential appointment has been made based on the appointee’s race, ethnicity, sex, or sexuality, not the appointee’s being the most highly qualified for the position. He has reinstated the Critical Race Theory inspired, and thus racist, ideological training in the federal government. (CRT divides humanity into oppressor races and oppressed races and revives the wicked ancient notion of blood guilt.) He signed a law that gives loan forgiveness to Black farmers but not White farmers.
Biden has abetted the vicious lie that there is an epidemic of police violence against Blacks, leading most Blacks and many Whites to believe that Blacks are more likely to die at the hands of the police than in automobile accidents, whereas the facts show that the latter is ten times more likely than the former, and that police killings are statistically quite rare and show no racial skew. And Biden continues publicly to indict the U.S. as plagued by systemic racism and White supremacy, despite offering no bill of particulars to back up that indictment (because there are no such particulars).
Relatedly, Biden has encouraged military leaders, who always want to know the path for career advancement, to cease trying to make the military the most muscular fighting machine and instead to make it woke. We now see the sex norming of fitness standards, the mandate to “diversify” the officer corps, and the purging of those with “extremist” (pro-Trump?) beliefs. A military has only one role—to win wars. But the Biden administration is willing to have the military turn its focus from that role and pursue an ideological agenda, even if that agenda will lead to cohesion-destroying sexual tensions and rivalries in combat units and the exclusion of those with excellent combat abilities.
Then there’s Biden’s disaster on the southern border. Biden’s stopping border wall construction and his restrictions on deportations have created a humanitarian crisis for the thousands of unaccompanied minors who have crossed the border in response to Biden’s welcome mat. They currently huddle together in temporary shelters, a high percentage infected with COVID, many of whom will be released to infect citizens.
Biden’s border policies have been a bonanza for the Mexican cartels, both financially and in terms of sexual exploitation of female migrants. Moreover, because the crisis of the unaccompanied minors has drawn border patrol agents away from policing the border, and because of the gaps left when Biden halted border-wall construction, the cartels now can easily smuggle in drugs, gang members, sex offenders, and potential terrorists.
There are other failing marks on Biden’s first report card. He continues to call Georgia’s voting law “Jim Crow 2.0” and lies about its content. Apparently, requiring a photo ID is racist because Blacks just don’t know how to get one. Of course, as is frequently pointed out, one needs such an ID to do almost everything. Indeed, one needs such an ID to get the COVID vaccine. So, is the Biden administration trying to suppress Black vaccinations? If requiring a photo ID is racist, then Biden’s vaccination program stands indicted.
Then there’s the XL pipeline’s cancellation, a completely irrational act. Canceling it cost thousands of people jobs. And what does it accomplish? The oil from Canada will still come in, but now it will come in by the less safe and more polluting truck and rail. Jobs lost, and nothing gained.
Indeed, the Biden climate policy, in general, is irrational. Biden would have the country endure enormous costs for almost no gain in reducing the world’s total output of greenhouse gases, particularly since China and India are the major contributors to that output. Moreover, if Biden were serious about this, he would opt for clean nuclear power and natural gas rather than the unreliable eyesores of wind farms and solar panels.
Biden has rescinded the due process rules the Trump administration prescribed for handling sexual assaults on college campuses. The Obama administration’s rules were widely criticized for being one-sided and unfair to those accused. Even a large portion of the liberal Harvard law faculty voiced that criticism. Apparently, true due process is not a Biden value.
Biden has signed and endorsed policies that spend money like drunken sailors—except that drunken sailors cannot print money. The idea that one can print money at a pace that outstrips the production of goods and services without devaluing that money and causing inflation—a cruel tax on those on fixed incomes—seems to be a Biden verity.
Biden’s foreign policy report card is still incomplete. Will he be tough on Iran and China? Perhaps, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Finally, where are the promised moderation, bipartisanship, and unity? And where is his past support of the filibuster? My surmise is that Biden—or perhaps his handlers, who may be running the presidency—never intended these things. That’s another failing grade, perhaps the most important one.
