Biden's terrible first year December 27, 2021 08:00

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December 27, 2021 08:00 AM
By Nicole Russell

From culture and foreign policy to COVID-19 and the economy, a close look reveals Biden’s first year was worse than either party thought it would be.

Biden started the year with a huge misstep for cultural conservatives when he released a Jan. 20 executive order on “preventing and combating discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.” While not an official law, this order did pave the way for federally funded entities such as schools to ban single-sex bathrooms, as administrators with the Chicago Public Schools did recently . Biden signaled within the first few days of holding office, and again in his April State of the Union speech, that he would not just be friendly to the gay and transgender community, but he would eagerly sign bills, such as the Equality Act, that would upend societal norms about gender and sex and penalize people who hold traditional views about such topics.

Biden’s mistakes go far beyond cultural issues. That same week in January, Biden halted former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, a move that was single-handedly responsible for the largest surge of immigrants at our nation’s border in over 20 years and that immediately caused a dangerous increase in crime and drugs at the border. The decision forced Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to bolster the border patrol and build a wall.

The economy has fared no better under Biden. While Democrats applauded Biden for his infrastructure bill, both parties should be able to admit that little about the economy or infrastructure has improved since he took office. In fact, it’s gotten far worse. The inflation rate “rose to 6.8% over the last year to its highest point since 1982,” and gas prices surged to $3 or more after the president shut down the Colonial Pipeline. An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal cited Biden’s “ naction on the Renewable Fuels Standard” as an additional contributor to high gas prices. Skyrocketing gas prices might seem small to lofty-minded politicians, but to small businesses and people who commute to work daily, the cost has been crippling.

As if Biden’s domestic policies weren’t bad enough, he didn’t stop making mistakes here. In August, Biden botched the military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan so badly that he started getting heat from Democrats and legacy media outlets.

“The debacle of the US defeat and chaotic retreat in Afghanistan is a political disaster for Joe Biden, whose failure to orchestrate an urgent and orderly exit will further rock a presidency plagued by crises and stain his legacy,” CNN’s Stephen Collinson wrote .

“Withdrawal was always bound to be chaotic, but wishful thinking, poor planning, and glacial bureaucracies have made a difficult situation worse,” read a subheading from a group of think tank authors at Foreign Policy. Biden’s decision will harm America’s relationships with our allies for decades to come.

Even Biden’s response to COVID-19 hasn’t helped his presidency much. Although the pandemic was difficult for Trump too, at least it was new then. Biden came into office touting unity and solutions. As it turns out, one of his solutions was forcing large employers to institute a vaccine mandate on their employees. The reaction was fierce and litigious. As some states remain wide open and others, such as California and New York, remain prisoners of mask and vaccine mandates, the presence of the omicron variant and another year of potential school closures demonstrates that Biden failed to dampen COVID-19 or even provide hope for the future.

As if this wasn’t enough, Biden fails on a monthly basis to communicate adequately, with fewer and fewer press conferences. “Joe Biden has been president of the United States for 138 days. And in that time, he has held a total of ONE formal news conference,” CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote in June. When Biden does give a speech , he often flubs even the most basic presentations in a manner that is as excruciating as it is revealing: There was a reason voters didn’t hear much from Biden outside of planned speeches with accompanying teleprompters.

Of course, no president is entirely responsible for what happens in America, but for a team that touted unity, a bolstered economy, a basic understanding of foreign policy, and “building back” what’s been lost, Biden’s first year was as bad as you thought — if not worse.