Why I Think President Biden is the Worst President Ever

Published 2Sep24.  Updated on 5Sep24 to add #7 (Charter Schools).  I had intentionally left that off originally because I didn't have the data at that time.

In a previous blog explaining why some voters favor Trump, I covered much of this information.  Here, I have separated it out and organized it better.  Short summary:

1.       President Biden has set the world on fire, while reducing our ability to defend ourselves.  This alone would justify my conclusion.
2.       We needed deficit spending to keep the pandemic from causing a depression.  However, when such disasters are over, we need to save for the next crisis.  Instead, President Biden has gone on an unprecedented spending spree.
3.       Under his leadership, the Democratic party has undermined our election process with major deceptions in each presidential election and by interfering in opposition parties.  In addition, he has tried repeatedly to outlaw requiring voter photo ID in federal elections and to allow unlimited ballot harvesting.  At best, Biden is the second-worst president in history in this regard to Trump.
4.       His energy policies have limited (relatively clean) energy production in the USA and boosted (dirty) energy production in Venezuela, Iran, and Russia.  He makes our allies and independent countries dependent on our enemies, enriching those enemies  and costing us jobs and revenue, while worsening the world’s environment.
5.       He has concentrated more power in the Executive.  This has been a long-term trend, well before Biden, but it continues to escalate.    
6.       After promising to bring us together, he has been the second-most divisive president in my lifetime (Trump wins the title).
7. He has been the least supportive president as regards public charter schools.  In matched-student comparisons, such schools have improved urban reading and math results by 16%.

The details:

1)     The world is on fire worse than any time in my lifetime.  This is not an accident; it sadly can be attributed directly to President Biden (Ukraine, Afghanistan).  Neville Chamberlain is widely disparaged for his 1938 agreement allowing Germany to annex the Sudetenland in return for a promise to make no further land demands.  President Biden, in contrast, has made numerous decisions that have exacerbated the situation. 

In President Biden’s fantasy world, he is the second coming of FDR.  But FDR strengthened the military tremendously in the years before we entered WWII.  Each of President Biden’s military budgets has increased by less than the inflation rate.  Wake up!  China, Russia, Iran et. al. are serious threats to democracy, including in the USA.

2)     The inflation during a President’s first term is generally not related to their policies; it is the result of prior administrations.  We needed deficit spending to counter the impact of COVID.  However, in good times, we must save money so we can operate at a deficit when crises such as COVID or war occur (10 Lessons from the Pandemic).  Instead, President Biden President has gone on an unprecedented spending spree that will burden future generations with intolerable and unnecessary debt levels.

Here's a CBO Projection of Debt (not reflecting Biden's Proposed Tax Increases.  

A CBO report on the 2024 deficit recently projected it to be 27% higher than projected in February in February, at 99% of GDP, rising to 122% of GDP in 2034 and continuing to rise thereafter.  The increase of the past six months was caused by support for Israel and Ukraine, student loan forgiveness, higher Medicaid costs and FDIC insurance.

3)     Undermining our electoral process:

Hoaxes: The Democrats have created significant election deception for three consecutive presidential elections.  I don’t hold President Biden responsible for the 2016 deception, but he certainly is responsible for 2020 and 2024.

2016: Hillary Clinton’s campaign funded the “Steele Dossier” hoax.

2020: President Biden’s staff stimulated 51 Intelligence officers to state falsely that the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be Russian disinformation.  (The media failed to report how the statement was created and that many intelligence officers refused to sign it.)  The CIA had proof that the statement was false, but James Clapper, former National Security Director, testified that he intentionally avoided access to CIA classified information that he was entitled to see because he “wanted only to go on what I had seen publicly”.   That is, he wanted the plausible deniability which he has since relied upon.

2024: Despite his 2020 claims that he would be a “one-term”, “interim”, “transition” president,  President Biden decided that he wanted to run again.  During his term, he hid his deteriorating mental faculties by avoiding interviews and obscuring doctors’ visits (meanwhile excoriating Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for a smaller transgression in health transparency).  When Robert Hur accurately described the difficulty in indicting him about his intentional keeping of classified documents, the Democrats engaged in character assassination.  Reports of Biden’s failures were characterized as political lies and films of his instability were falsely labelled “doctored”.  The Democrats suppressed opposing candidates in Democratic primaries at least partly so that Biden’s losses would not be exposed.

Now the Democrats try to convince us that President Biden did a patriotic thing by voluntarily stepping down.  The truth is that he tried to hoodwink us and that he strongly resisted stepping down.  Now we have a Presidential candidate who was not vetted in any primaries and who is running the shortest Presidential campaign in history.

Suppressing democratic elections:  During Biden’s presidency, the Democrats expanded earlier practices by spending $51.5 million in 2022 to interfere in Republican primaries in 12 states to nominate Republicans who would be easier to beat.   They say Trump is a threat to democracy, yet they finance the Trumpiest candidates.  How’s that for hypocrisy?  Interfering in the other party’s primary is unpatriotic and a strong threat to democracy.  It continues today.

Likewise, the Democrats also took a variety of clearly undemocratic and immoral steps to undermine the “No Labels” party.  You might argue that Biden did not lead some of these efforts, but he was the leader of the party, the President of our country, and should have urged Democrats to discontinue these activities.

The Democrats have also colluded with Republicans in several ways to thwart democracy.  These may not be Biden’s responsibility.  “Sore loser” laws exist in most states precluding a candidate for running for a position if they lost a primary election for that post.  The parties work together to undermine Ranked-Choice voting because it poses a threat to their duopoly.  They engage in joint gerrymandering, creating safe districts for each other.  In safe districts, the general election is decided in the primary of the party whose seat is assured.  Thus, a small percentage of that party (generally those most extreme) determine who will win the general election.

Election reform: President Biden continues to lie about election laws in GA and other states (see Voting Laws and Voter Suppression and Election Fraud).  Meanwhile, Democrats continue to try to allow unlimited voter harvesting and ban requiring voter photo ID for federal elections.  (See section 303a and 307(f)(2) of H.R. 1 and sections 103-104 of the HEROES Act. HEROES Act.)  In my view, the Democrats’ (fortunately unpassed) bills to accomplish these goals are a significant threat to democracy, moving us back toward Tammany Hall/Richard Daley/Pendergast elections.  My local Democratic newspaper repeatedly refused to publish a letter to the editor I wrote on this topic because they insisted I was wrong.  When I finally sent them the relevant text of the laws, they discontinued communication without acknowledging that I was right.

4)   Energy policy: President Biden’s energy policy strikes me as a Saturday Night Live skit.  Prior to entering office, Biden said his position was “No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill.  Period.”  He also said “no new fracking” and “no new oil and gas permits on public land”.  While in office, he said “we're going to be shutting [coal] plants down all across America”. 

The Keystone XL pipeline was subject to a huge number of regulatory bodies in the US and Canada with numerous expensive studies required over many years.  Each time they passed the “last hurdle”, the US added new requirements for political reasons.  Frustrated that the XL Pipeline passed each requirement, President Obama finally approved the project in March 2012.  In November 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry said there was a “perception” that it would increase greenhouse-gas emissions and whether that was true or not, it was not in the US’s interest to continue the pipeline.  So, in a colossal example of perfidy, Obama shut it down.  Trump appropriately allowed it to re-start.  On his first day in office, Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, making a mockery of US regulations and laws.  What is the purpose of a regulatory process if the president can cancel the project because some of his constituents don’t like it?

Nord Stream II: After blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, President Biden decided to help Russia build Nord Stream II to get gas to Germany while by-passing Ukraine.  He did so, despite bipartisan opposition, by waiving multiple Trump-era sanctions.

Boosting foreign oil: After putting the industry on notice that he wanted to put them out of business, Biden blamed the industry for energy shortages.  He turned to Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia to boost production.  What sense does this make?

a.      Attacking our fuel sources makes our energy supply less stable, hurts our economy and costs jobs.

b.      He made concessions to Venezuela and Iran, helping terrible regimes and funding terrorism.

c.      He helped Russia export oil, undermining Ukraine and funding Russia’s war.

d.     He made our allies and third world countries dependent on our enemies for energy.

e.      He increased worldwide pollution significantly because those foreign sources develop energy in much less environmental fashion than we do.

LNG: President Obama embraced LNG exports for geopolitical reasons and because exported LNG was more environmentally friendly than foreign local coal.  Trump embraced LNG exports, approving permits on average in 7 weeks. 

Biden averaged 11 months to approve (nearly 7 times as long) until, in January 2024, he “paused” approvals to reconsider whether to allow them.  A review may well have been a good idea.  However, as President Biden has made so many energy decisions based on politics rather than sound reasoning, there is cause to be skeptical.  (A court ruled that he could review policy, but that the law required him to process applications in the interim.  In weighing the court’s ruling, I sadly must keep in mind that President Biden has repeatedly taken steps that he knows are not within his jurisdiction.)

This article gives the anti-LNG-export argument, that it is dirtier than local coal (because of diverting natural gas to LNG rather than increasing natural gas production) and will replace renewables (countries that invest in LNG facilities won’t want to convert to renewables).

My main take-away is that we make major decisions based on unreliable studies, as this article argues regarding studies under Obama and Trump.  The current studies also might be wrong.

Opponents suggest that, if we don’t export LNG, countries will develop more renewable resources.  Did they consider that countries may build the facilities anyway, to receive LNG from Russia (which had record LNG exports in December), Iran and Qatar, our biggest LNG competitors?

Electric cars: I’ve been an advocate of alternative fuels for a long time.  In the mid-1990s, I successfully insisted that Transamerica allow me to have a flexible fuel vehicle for my company car.  But the hellbent for leather approach to electric cars does not make sense to me.  We seem to be plunging ahead without knowing what we’re doing:

a)        Some studies indicate that hybrids might be a better approach, but Biden won’t “pause” his pushing of the electric car button.

b)       Electric cars require a tremendous amount of rare earth minerals which are mostly mined in China (and secondarily in the Congo with forced labor).  President Biden is creating a huge strategic risk for the USA by giving China control over a critical resource and worldwide pricing of this resource.

c)         Biden has picked some projects to invest in that are trying to develop rare earth minerals from waste (I don’t think the federal government should be picking winners and losers).  On the other hand, he has blocked mining of rare earth minerals.

d)       We don’t know the impact electric cars will have.  Currently there are reports of fires and the cars are much heavier, likely requiring more infrastructure costs that reportedly have not been considered in environmental impact studies.

  5)   Within our Federal government, Presidents are grabbing increased power, with President Biden and his administration continuing to take executive power to new limits, spewing rules at an unprecedented pace without due process.  They cancel student loans, assume control over energy production, try to put industries out of business, invalidate contracts on a widescale basis, set aside huge acreage by executive fiat, create internet and labor law, etc.  (Whether I support the policies or not, I do NOT support the Executive Branch unilaterally making such decrees.)  Agencies act as prosecutor and judge.  Congress abdicates authority, passing laws such as the Inflation Reduction Act which authorizes the President to pick winners and losers.  What could possibly go wrong?

The increased power at the Federal level and particularly in the President has contributed to our national elections becoming so contentious as the stakes and number of issues increase.  Elected Presidents presume they have a multitude of mandates no matter why they got elected.  The Democrats are intent in further undermining the separation of powers that is critical to our success (Separation of Powers).

6)  President Biden promised that he would bring us together.  Instead, he has divided us.  He went from moderate to progressive.  He benefited from the quick development of the COVID vaccine under Trump and he continued some Trump policies relative to tariffs and borders but has never said anything favorable about his opponents.  He claims that Trump handed him a terrible economy, but by the end of Biden's second month in office, the real GDP had recovered to its pre-pandemic level (according to the WSJ, 16Aug24), having improved 48% in the previous three quarters.  Clearly, Biden was not responsible for that recovery.  As noted, he had particularly lied about election laws and has tried to undermine our elections in several ways that have divided us.  We really need a president who will work to bring us together; we haven’t had one since Bill Clinton.

7)  According to Jason Riley ("Biden and Harris Work to Crush School Competition", WSJ, 4Sep24, "Biden is easily the most anticharter president in American history."  President Clinton created the Charter Schools Program and President Obama expanded it.  President Biden's proposed FY2025 Education Budget is $82.4 billion, a 4% increase over FY2024.  However, he proposed a 9% cut for the Charter Schools Program.  In addition, Riley quotes Christy Wolfe of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools as saying the Biden administration is creating more obstacles to make it harder to get the money.  (Note: I'd likely conclude that the Federal government should be less involved in Education, but that is not the point here.)   President Biden is, in his own words, "not a charter-school fan", even though a large matched-student study by Stanford University shows that charter schools produced 16% better learning in both math and English for urban schools.

What Would Likely Happen if Trump is Elected in 2024?

Although I’m a never-Trumper, I acknowledge that Trump did some good things as president and that his Presidency was greatly more favorable than President Biden’s term. 

Many people voting for Trump are hoping to reprise what was happening in our country pre-pandemic.  However, for the following reasons, a second Trump presidency is hugely unpredictable and less likely to have the favorable consequences of his first term.  (Admittedly, predicting is speculative, particularly with respect to Trump.)

1.        Trump has no principles.  He does what feels good to him and is very volatile.  It is not clear that he would try to do things he did in his first administration.

2.        Who will serve in his cabinet and in the White House if he gets elected?  The adults who were in the room the first time are likely to be replaced by people in whom I’d have a lot less confidence.  Why would any intelligent reasonable person want to report to Trump?  He has no loyalty and is most likely to stab you in the back. 

When have we ever seen a former President run for re-election and have so many former staffers expressing that he is unfit to be President?  Is it not scary that so many of those who were closest to him feel that he is unfit?  Lots of people criticize Nikki Haley and William Barr for supporting him.  It remains clear that they still consider him to be unfit.  They just consider the alternative to be worse.

3.        His Vice President running mate is telling.  In 2016, he picked Mike Pence, a man of great personal integrity and a patriot.  Pence had tremendous experience and was an effective deal-maker in Congress.  This time, Trump picked J. D. Vance, a young, inexperienced individual whose history since graduating from Yale Law School shows little accomplishment other than enriching himself by writing a book and creating a move that expose the dysfunctionality of the family into which he was born.

4.        His tariffs were a bad idea.  Now he is saying he wants across-the-board tariffs, which clearly can’t be a good idea.  How can across-the-board anything be a good idea?  Across-the-board is the lazy person’s way to avoid having to think and evaluate.

5.        He promises to deport all illegal immigrants no matter how long they have been here, how much they have contributed, whether they have a clean record, and the impact on their families and the economy.

6.        He (like the Democrats; please note I am not praising the Democrats!) has promised stupid things to pander for votes: no tax on tips, free IVF, etc.

7.        Being a lame duck may also make Trump less effective, but I think that will be balanced by his use of Executive Orders.  I have spoken against the growing use of Executive Orders for at least 12 years.  These undermine our separation of powers.  Trump is not alone in this regard.  President Biden told us things were illegal, but he’d do them anyway.  But Trump is likely to ratchet them up even further.  There will be more fights between the Executive Branch and the Courts.  (I think the Supreme Court will continue to support separation of powers, but if you inundate the Supreme Court with issues, it can’t address them all.  Trump is likely to leverage that approach.)

8.        The Democrats and media will fight Trump tooth-and-nail, perhaps even harder than before.  Although the Democrats say “When the Republicans go low, we go high.”, the Democrats lied repeatedly about Trump in his first term and will continue to do so. 

9.        Trump would be inheriting a very different world situation in February 2025.  Trump has not demonstrated that he has the skill set to handle such a situation.  He claims to have a lot of skill as a negotiator, but his “skills” are limited to bullying, temper tantrums, threats, name-calling, etc.  He is NOT a skilled negotiator.  See my blog Risks To Which Trump Exposed Us.  These risks remain and will likely get worse in a second Trump presidency.

10.   In 2016, I described his limited attention span.  It has not gotten any better.  He is often incoherent, as he was in his debate with Biden.

11.   I am worried that such an irrational, emotional person could hold the keys to nuclear war.

12.    Trump could easily walk away from revenge, but he continues to suggest retaliation and has consistently been vengeful his entire (at least, adult) life.  Do you want a large part of the next four years to be focused on revenge more so than governing/  The recent Supreme Court decision making it harder to hold him accountable is troubling and will encourage him to misbehave.  He will undoubtedly continue to engage in childish, petty name-calling which is not constructive.

13.   A president needs to understand the consequences of his actions and modify his behavior to accomplish his goals.  Instead, Trump alienates the voters he needs to win by making fun of Harris’s name and ancestry. 

Incredulously, he speaks in an important swing state (Georgia) where the very popular governor is supporting his candidacy and goes into a prolonged rant against that governor.  When Trump previously tried to defeat that governor, the Georgians demonstrated that they overwhelmingly (for very good reasons) favor Kemp over Trump.  Why a competent, sane person do that?

He had a tremendous opportunity when he attended a Black journalists’ conference and Kamala Harris was not present.  The interviewer asked him a challenging question: Why should African-Americans vote for him in the face of the many slights she rattled off?  From my perspective, this was a GREAT opportunity for him.  He could have responded:

Thank you for asking.  I don’t believe in identity politics.  Just because someone is African-American does not mean that he should vote for me.  That alone is one reason why African-Americans should consider me.  Unlike Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I don’t take them for granted.  You mentioned disrespectful comments; yes, I’ve done some of those, but look at my overall approach and policies.  Can you imagine a President of the USA saying “If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black.”  When I was president, the unemployment rate for African-Americans hit a historic low.  African-Americans had record increases in real income.  That does not necessarily mean they should all vote for me; for example, affluent professional African-Americans did not experience such benefits themselves. 

Another issue is that the Biden/Harris campaign has set the world on fire.  Who suffers if we have a major world war?  African-Americans are 50% more likely to be in our military than Caucasians, so a war exposes them to more risk.  In addition, they are half as likely to be officers, which exposes them to more risk.  And if a war brings economic hardship, that falls most on the less affluent members of our society, and they are disproportionately Black. 

These comments raise the question: How are we going to improve Black affluence?  In addition to my economic policies, we need to improve the public education system.  We talk about systemic bias in this country, but the public school system is the most systematically biased institution we have and the Biden/Harris team steadfastly supports the teachers unions who have failed the less-affluent portions of the African-American population.   I also directed record sums of support to historically-black colleges.

Am I the President who allowed our cities to burn?  Would I have ordered the police to stand down and let minority-owned businesses burn to the ground?  Of course not, I’m tough on law which is important to protect minority neighborhoods.  But I coupled that with pushing through the First Step Act which may important changes to our judicial and penal practices.  It was hailed by most everyone as a positive and momentous law.

I could obviously go on for a long time.  How has the Biden/Harris border policy affected African-Americans?  Again, it depends on where they live, their affluence level, etc. but illegal immigrants have taken jobs away from African-Americans, they have put downward pressure on wages at the lower end and they have increased crime in the inner city and in prisons.  He could have also mentioned his tariff policy (although I disagree with it).

Instead, Trump blew up.

Trump supporters might say I just made a great case for electing Trump.  I acknowledge that but, besides that other points made herein, this bullet shows how incompetent Trump is.

14.   A Trump presidency would further destroy the Republican party.  From my perspective, Trump is the RINO (“Republican” in name only).  It is a typical schoolyard tactic to cover your weaknesses by pinning them on someone else.   A resounding defeat of Trump would be good in this regard.