President Joe Biden speaks about his infrastructure agenda while visiting the under construction Fern Hollow Bridge, in Pittsburgh, Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Two years in — what’s Biden’s record?
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Scott LaMar
President Joe Biden speaks about his infrastructure agenda while visiting the under construction Fern Hollow Bridge, in Pittsburgh, Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Airdate: November 15, 2022
Last week’s mid-term election went against history. The first term after a new president has taken office almost always leads to the opposing party making big gains in Congress.
That was what was expected last week, but it didn’t happen.
What made Democrats strong showing even more of a surprise is that the nation is facing the highest inflation rates in 40 years, the price of gas has been setting records, polls show Americans believe the country is on the wrong path and President Joe Biden’s job approval ratings have been low.
However, more voters than expected rejected Republican candidates. Does that mean they disliked the message Republicans were sending or that they could live with Democrats and Biden’s policies?
Either way, the midterm or two years into a Biden Administration is a good time to examine the Biden presidency and that’s we did on The Spark Tuesday.
Among President Biden’s supporters see as successes are bipartisan passage of a $1 trillion infrastructure law, a climate change spending bill, the American Rescue Plan, that sent $1,400 checks to most Americans but may have also contributed to inflation, and lowering prescription drug prices.
David O’Connell, Associate Professor of Political Science at Dickinson College, appeared on The Spark and said of the infrastructure bill,”I think one of the ways you see it, it was a major victory, is that a lot of Republican candidates in the past election cycle were taking credit for some of those programs that were part of a bill that they opposed because they recognized that those investments are popular with their constituents. I think one of the things that we’ll have to look to for the long term is, is this money used responsibly or is there ultimately going to be a substantial number of projects that are wasteful and not really a judicious use of taxpayer dollars.”
O’Connell was asked about Biden’s biggest failure,”Afghanistan is really just kind of a profound failure, where Biden seemed to have been absolutely committed to withdrawing troops as soon as possible, even when simply delaying that operation or just keeping a small residual force of troops in the country would have stabilized things and not meant that U.S. troops died. Allies of the US were left behind and ultimately 20 years of fighting leaves us back to where we started. And so one thing that I’m looking for for the next two years is does Biden learn from that experience? I was just in my presidency class yesterday and I was talking about the Bay of Pigs with my students. And so Kennedy had a really poor advisory process where they were victims of groupthink, convincing themselves of all sorts of unrealistic assumptions that US involvement would never be detected, even though it was reported in the newspapers before, or that there would be an uprising in Cuba without any evidence that that would occur. But then Kennedy made changes, and he put in place a new system for making decisions that paid off in the Cuban Missile Crisis, where they were able to come to agreement on a path that avoided a nuclear exchange. So what I would hope is if that is the biggest failure that Biden took some lessons from how those decisions were made and that they come into play in future foreign policy crises in the future.”
O’Connell addressed a poll taken last week that found three quarters of those responding saying they didn’t want Biden to run for president again,”Biden started off his presidency like all presidents except Trump, where he did have a honeymoon. In fact, his first quarter, he was generally popular among the public. And I see the pivot as being Afghanistan. Right after the chaotic withdrawal, he wound up losing substance, tangible support from people who were persuadable, who maybe called into question his competence, which was one of the fundamental reasons that he he put forward for his his candidacy. And then you saw continued struggles with the economy and all these kind of negative factors that are depressing his support. And so I think that’s why people are just not necessarily enthusiastic about his leadership at this moment. But it doesn’t mean that that’s going to continue. If those economic factors change, then there’s no reason he can’t be at a low point now the way Obama was in 2010 or Clinton was in 1994, both in the low forties, with people not expressing enthusiasm about them running again and still ultimately being successful.”
