If you’re worried that not even ten months into Joe Biden’s presidency, it is going down the tubes, calm down, don’t lose hope, things are not as dire as they seem.
Sure, if you want him to succeed, a new poll is discouraging. Just released by NBC News, it says that Biden’s approval rating is under water. Only 42-percent of Americans applaud the job he’s doing. More than half the people polled worry that America’s best years “may already be behind us.” And 71-percent— that’s seven out of every ten Americans— fear the nation is going in the wrong direction.
The thing is, whether troubles are military or economic, diplomatic, political, or cultural, it is typical that the leader gets the blame. But, if this nation is going in the wrong direction, is it all Joe Biden’s fault?
If more than half the members of one of our two major political parties still buy into the bald-faced lie that Donald Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election, then yes, the nation is going in the wrong direction. But that’s not on Biden.
If millions of citizens still buy into the factually discredited but still dangerous movement to “Stop the Steal,” which is implicitly or even explicitly endorsed by nearly every Republican member of Congress— and the unfathomable fervor of those citizens and those elected officials is only escalating— then yes, the nation is going in the wrong direction. But that’s not on Biden either.
If a man takes the microphone at a right-wing “Turning Point USA” rally and amid the cheers of the audience asks, "When do we get to use the guns? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” then yes, the nation is going in the wrong direction. By the way, the rally’s organizer shut the guy down but not because his aim was abhorrent. He only shut him down because, as he said— unscrupulously alluding to the Left— “they want that.”
If a congressman from Texas tells the Conservative Political Action Conference that the traitors who tried to overturn the election on January 6th were acting against “tyranny,” then yes, the nation is going in the wrong direction. The insurrection wasn’t an attempt to triumph over tyranny, it was an attempt to stage a coup, and that’s surely not on Biden. As commentator Dean Obeidallah wrote, ”Coups are not just tanks rolling in the streets. It's an illegal attempt to overturn the will of the people to retain political power.”
If you think of the citizens who attack school board members for mandating vaccines or even just masks to shelter children from the coronavirus— the National School Boards Association has even had to plead with the federal government to help protect school board members from violence and threats and harassment— then yes, the nation is going in the wrong direction.
If an elected demagogue like Ted Cruz pounds on the pulpit during a Senate hearing, defending someone’s odious embrace of Nazi protocol at a local school board meeting by saying, “A parent did a Nazi salute… because they thought (the board’s) policies were oppressive,” then yes, the nation is going in the wrong direction.
If you think about all the Americans who refuse to get vaccinated, including the likes of nurses and first responders who ought to know better, then yes, the nation is going in the wrong direction.
If political differences in this deeply divided country make it improbable that we can reverse the existential effects of climate change, then yes, the nation is going in the wrong direction.
If political dysfunction in this divided country makes it impossible to reverse the arrogantly anti-constitutional voting laws enacted in most Republican-led states, then yes, the nation is going in the wrong direction.
If the United States Constitution is not just denigrated but disobeyed, threatened, and violated, not only by rogue citizens but even by elected members of state legislatures and of the United States Congress, then yes, the nation is going in the wrong direction.
But that’s not on Joe Biden. None of it is. It’s on the people who are causing the commotion.
Yes, some of the troubles that put us on the wrong track are on Biden. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, however he wants to paint it as a success story, was messier than it had to be. The crush of people trying to cross into the United States at the Mexican border is bigger than it had to be.
Maybe the president could have done more to stop the spread of Covid after the surge of the Delta variant. Maybe he could have done more to fix supply chain shortages after production slowdowns in Asia. Maybe he could have done more to convince Americans to return to their old jobs instead of holding out for something better. But in every case, I don’t know how. True, the buck does stop at the president’s desk, but these things would have happened under any president, not just under Biden.
The nature of public opinion polls is, if the country seems headed in the wrong direction for any of a thousand reasons, it ends up falling on the leadership. And that is Joe Biden.
But if his long-embattled infrastructure bills do eventually pass, he’s going to look better and those polling numbers will turn up again. Then he can focus on trying to restore voting rights where they have been curtailed, hopefully with the backing of holdouts in his own party who naively thought they could reinstate fair elections without weakening the obstructive Senate filibuster. They can’t. If they come around and he gets his way there, he’s going to look even better and those polling numbers will look even better too.
True, the bigger picture of looming elections is complicated by the Electoral College where, as we’ve seen twice already in the first two decades of this century, two presidents— George W. Bush and Donald Trump— were elected despite losing the popular vote. You can argue that the Founders’ aim with the Electoral College was a fair shake for rural states. But those states get that fair shake with their proportion of representation in the United States Senate. You can’t argue that with a minority of the people but an outsized portion of electoral votes, those states ought to determine the fate of the nation.
There’s an old saying in politics that you're only as good as your last act. There is a full year left before the 2022 midterm elections for Congress, so Joe Biden and his party still have a few acts to go. Even in Republican states, some of their potential programs are popular. But they have to pass.
For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Some of his writing also appears on a website he co-founded, BoomerCafe.com.
No can say you haven't given Biden the benefit of the doubt. A definitive "yea" or "nay" on the issues you have examined is difficult. My concern is Biden's ability to function, particularly as President. I have a great deal of experience - not as a healthcare professional but as a care giver. I spent many years involved in the care of a relative suffering from an advanced form of dementia and I clearly see the same signs in Mr. Biden that I saw in her - over and over and over. The vacant gazes when he should be focused, the apparent inability to string more than two sentences together without benefit of a Tele-Prompter, the inability to stay on point, etc. The phrases I heard a thousand times from my relative were "What do I do?" and "What am I doing?" Sound familiar? He is obviously being carefully managed, but that management can only go so far. Believe me - I've been there. And the person waiting in the wings is too wierd to fathom.