Tune Out the Political Noise—Here's What Biden Really Accomplished

President Joe Biden ran for reelection believing he was the only Democrat who could keep Trump out of the White House and thus prevent an assault on democracy. The election, he said, was “for the soul of America.”

Biden was wrong about his chances of winning, but he was right about the stakes. The battle for the soul of America is now fully engaged.

Biden Accomplishments During a Historic Crisis

What that battle obscures and grossly misrepresents is Biden’s accomplishments after taking office during the depth of the worst pandemic in a century, at a time when 23,000 Americans were dying each week, and when most economists were forecasting a deep recession in the pandemic’s wake.

During his first two years as president, Biden had to navigate through a U.S. House where Democrats had just a four-vote majority and a Senate divided 50-50 between the two parties. For his final two years, the House was ruled by a Republican caucus so dysfunctional it ousted its own speaker.

By the time Biden took office, 400,000 Americans had died of Covid. In some places refrigerated vans were deployed as morgues. Many of the ill were shunted to make-shift ERs in gyms and FEMA tents. Masks and other protective health equipment were in short supply.

Miraculously, NIH had managed the development of a vaccine in record time, but the Trump administration’s deployment of it was chaotic. Trump himself was pushing “cures” that had little to do with medical reality.

Biden’s White House quickly established a process that vaccinated 250 million Americans by the end of his first year in office. Covid deaths fell from more than 23,000 a week to less than 400.

Biden also saw to it that the economic blow to U.S. business and consumers alike was blunted, that many business doors stayed open, that state and local governments and school districts did not need to make savage pandemic-related cuts, that unemployed renters were not forced from their homes.

As a result, the deep and extended recession most economists expected didn’t happen. More than 16 million jobs were created on his watch. Biden was the first president in history who oversaw job growth every single month he was in office. Even during the worst of the epidemic.

If that had been all Biden accomplished, it would have been a remarkable achievement. But there was a lot more.
 

Infrastructure, Clean Energy, and Consumer Protection Wins

Millions of Americans are at work today because Biden did what successions of other presidents failed to do—enact a comprehensive bipartisan infrastructure program. Moody’s forecasts 600,000 more new program-related jobs will be created just this year.

Hundreds of thousands more jobs have been created because of Biden’s leadership in clean energy. No matter how hard he tries, Trump won’t be able to turn off that clean energy switch.

Consumers are paying fewer junk fees to banks, airlines and other monopolists, and will continue to keep avoiding those costs unless Trump succeeds in his attempts to reverse those Biden team actions.

Biden’s “Cancer Moon Shot” program so far has produced a series of stunning scientific breakthroughs, including vaccines now in development or early clinical trials with potential for treating and even preventing certain cancers.

Media Narratives and Biden’s Presidential Legacy

Before leaving office, Biden’s White House staff produced a list of his administration’s achievements. Here it is:
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/fact-sheet-the-biden-harris-administration-record

I doubt few will click on it. Fewer will read it because of its length. Some may consider it fake news.

But it isn’t.

Biden was a remarkably successful president during a time when the infection gods and the partisan divide should have combined to make a difficult job virtually impossible. Inflation, Immigration. These issues more than any brought him down. But even there, by the end of his fourth year in office, illegal immigration was down by 95% from its peak. Inflation was at 2.9%, near the Federal Reserve’s historical target.

Why am I writing about this now? What’s it have to do with today’s latest crisis?

I’m writing because neither Trump nor congressional Republicans will give trashing Biden a rest. Trump just called for a special counsel to investigate the results of the 2020 election. The House is “investigating” whether Biden was still functioning as president near the end of his term.

The media and even some Democrats continue to use this good and decent man as a political punching bag, a one-size-fits-all excuse for their own failures. Yes, his decision to run for reelection likely paved the way for Trump’s return. We will never know for certain. Biden is rightly faulted for that, even though it doesn’t fully explain why 78 million people voted for a convicted felon.

But if you judge presidential performance by its impact on the lives of Americans, the economy, its protection of individual rights and constitutional values, Biden’s term in office was an astounding success.

He deserves our thanks and admiration, not the mud his detractors can’t seem to stop throwing at him.

Comments? Criticism? Contact Joe Rothstein at jrothstein@rothstein.net

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