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.