This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden treading water. He had little impact in the Russia-Ukraine crisis, no impact on the surge in inflation and gas prices, and was dismissed as a failure in approval rating polls.
He did succeed in fulfilling his promise to liberals to nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court, the admired federal appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. But his polling remained low, his agenda remained stalled, and the battle against the coronavirus was a confusing mess. He hopes to give it life at next week’s State of the Union address.
Conservative foreign policy analyst and grader Jed Babbin wished he could grade lower than an “F,” and Democratic pollster John Zogby graded a “C” and raised several concerns about Biden, including his ability to push his court pick through the evenly divided Senate.
Jed Babbin
Grade F
For Biden and his crew, it was another week seeking to prove that there isn’t anyone in the administration with an IQ above room temperature.
The weekly prize for the dumbest statement (which I believe will hold up as the dumbest of the year) came from Biden’s climate change czar, John Kerry. Kerry first bemoaned the emissions caused by Russia’s war of conquest on Ukraine (even those emissions caused by Ukrainian forces fighting for their lives, families, and homes). He then pleaded with Russian President Vladimir Putin to not let the war he’s conducting distract him from the urgent need to address climate change. You can’t make this stuff up, people.
Here is the literal memo to the Dems from Biden’s polling firm. Declare a win over Covid and move on. I suspect CDC will get the memo. Will @GavinNewsom and @lapublichealth? We shall see. SOTU is Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/1Enk5SIITk
— Julie Hamill (@hamill_law) February 25, 2022
Meanwhile, the price of oil has gone over $100, which will raise the price of gasoline here. Biden promised to fight price increases, but he won’t reverse his bad decisions canceling pipelines, ending oil and gas drilling leases, and more, all of which make gas more expensive. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said we’d continue buying Russian oil. Biden did announce more sanctions on Russia, but as always, they’re so weak that they won’t change Russia’s behavior one little bit.
Inflation again hit the highest level in about 40 years, the southern border remains open, and Biden is incompetent to deal with any of these things. If there were a grade lower than an F, he’d have earned it this week.
John Zogby
Grade C
To a great degree, all elected leaders are dealt a hand of cards. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. loved to pose the question: What if Calvin Coolidge were president in the 1860s and Abraham Lincoln in the 1920s? Would Lincoln have been Coolidge and Coolidge have been Lincoln? Good question.
Bill Clinton longed to be a wartime president so he could have led a nation in war. George W. Bush maneuvered to get that chance, and he blew it big time. It is far too early to make any judgment on Biden as president, so I grade him one week at a time — but with a peek into what future historians might think. His polling numbers ticked up this week, so he is now averaging 43% in the latest polls. Not great but higher than last week’s 41% average. Almost 3 out of 3 people (58%) now feel that his first year in office was a failure. I think that is harsh, but despite several notable accomplishments, he has not been able to get out from the noise about inflation and incivility.
He has appointed the first black woman to the Supreme Court, but he will have to scramble to get her the 50 votes she will need to be seated.
Of course, this will forever be the week that Russian President Vladimir Putin did the unthinkable by actually (and brutally) invading a sovereign and transitionally democratic Ukraine. Biden presides over a country that is no longer the dominant superpower in the world. His options were limited in preventing the Russian invasion and even more limited in trying to stop what is underway.
He is fortunate that the opposition party is muted by its own disagreements, but it all goes back to having been dealt a very bad hand of cards.
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His weekly podcast with son and partner Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @ZogbyStrategies
