With the Biden presidency in the books, let’s look back at what he did.
THE BOGEY MAN
For fun, let’s start with all the crap the opposition party (and people on this board) said would happen. IE. conservative fear mongering.
They said Biden would crash the stock market, yet he gave us the strongest stock market of all time.
They said he was in bed with China, yet he continued Trump’s tariffs, added export controls of his own regarding chips, strengthened our Pacific presence with AUKUS + Japan + new base deals with the Philippines (repairing relations after a previously hostile administration).
Then there was GSC’s “Lockdown Comission.” Lol, do I even need to address this one?
MIXED BAG
Let’s get serious about what Biden wasn’t so great at.
Economy is the big one. We can’t blame Trump for covid or job losses, and we can’t blame either for stimulus and ensuing inflation. Same with recovery, which was some parts automatic. Still, Biden deserves a share of blame for inflation and a share of credit for recovery. The Fed kept their grip on things. We had no spiral and kept a steady build. Food prices and gas prices have greatly recovered. Still serious work to be done for the second term past covid, but hard to deny the US has recovered better than the bulk of the world.
The Afghanistan pullout is the obvious black mark on Biden’s foreign policy. The execution was bad but the resolution was positive for the US. Of course this whole thing started under Trump, both good and bad, as it was a crappy deal with dubious concessions, but ultimately ended an unwinnable quagmire. Glad both presidents saw the value in pulling troops and that Biden did so.
The Houthi campaign against Red Sea shipping was/is somewhat disappointing. Biden’s strategy was obviously to not get into a war in the Middle East. Shipping more or less adjusted to Houthi missiles by navigating other routes, and trade settled into slightly increased costs. So the admin basically ignored the problem. Yes, there were better ways to tackle this, but the Biden admin acheived some wins as well by not engaging.
THE GOODS
Last is the really good stuff.
Biden appointed even more judges than Trump, breaking that record.
And of course we have the general investments in America. Chips and manufacturing, onshoring, etc. There are lots of possibilities here but to be fair we won’t be able to gauge returns for at least a decade.
Ukraine was an American intelligence coup. No one believed Russia would attack, even Ukraine. Republicans claimed Biden was a war mongerer trying to start trouble where it didn’t exist. Now, 3 years later, Ukraine has stood up to the Russian invasion. They are still sovereign. The war (surprisingly?) wasn’t ended in a day. Western support worked.
NATO became a true coalition and grew stronger than it has been in 40 years, arguably stronger than ever. US aid got Ukraine by until Europe got their shit together. Manufacturing in Germany has stepped up, states like Poland are investing heavily in their military, Sweden and Finland are shining members of the alliance. US soft power is real.
Ukraine is now starting to be seen as a smart investment. Some Republicans are shifting to discussing this war in financial terms, as a cost/benefit ratio to the US. Biden set up a deal to import rare Earth elements mined and processed in Ukraine (part of diversifying away from China). The final signing of that deal was delayed twice. Why? To give Trump an easy win and reason to support Ukraine. You’ll see that inked and Trump boasting about how smart he is but make no mistake: this was Biden’s win.
Israel’s war sucked the air out of the room for a while, but look at the returns on US support. Hamas is on life support, with a ceasefire drawn up 9 months ago by the Biden administration and starting to happen. Hezbollah, long thought of as Iran’s trump card against the Jewish state, has been almost completely destroyed. Iran undertook two historic attacks against Israel that both failed miserably (and embarrassingly), with US might shooting down many of the threats. Finally, with Iran and Hezbollah and Russia all weakened, Assad fell in Syria. These three hostile powers retreated from the country. This is a further blow to Russia’s power projection, this time affecting African operations. This is an even bigger blow to Iran’s Axis of Resistance, and more generally their entire strategy of projecting power through deniable proxies. Israel has stood up as THE regional power in the Middle East.
These are a lot of wins to stuff into a single post. Needless to say, we’ve been living in interesting times.