This week’s White House report card finds President Joe Biden making moves to run for reelection next year.
It started with his State of the Union address, full of questionable claims he has fixed the country former President Donald Trump left him. It ended with another military shoot-down of what we still don’t know.
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Our graders had widely different interpretations of the week. Conservative analyst Jed Babbin called it another week of whoppers, leading with Biden’s “lies and half-truths” in his Tuesday speech to Congress. He graded a D-.
Democratic pollster John Zogby gave the president a gold star for delivering an able 2024 agenda in his speech. In grading an A-, Zogby also noted that Biden is in a close horse race with his potential Republican opponents for president.
Jed Babbin
Grade: D-
President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was the unofficial kickoff to his 2024 campaign. It was so full of lies and half-truths that it was hard to keep track of them all. Here are some of the lowlights.
Biden claimed that when he came to office our economy was “reeling.” If reeling meant 1.4% inflation, vastly lower debt, and an economy slowed only by the COVID pandemic, that might have been true. It wasn’t. Under Biden, inflation peaked at over 9% and is still about 6.5%. Take-home pay is less, the deficit — which he claimed to cut — is now up and the national debt is at over $31 trillion. Just the interest we paid on the debt last year (over $853 billion) is bigger than this year’s entire defense budget. C’mon, man.
Another Biden whopper was his claim to have “created” 12 million jobs. Most of those jobs were lost during the COVID pandemic lockdowns and have since been recovered. Biden sure didn’t “create” any of them.
In another “c’mon, man” statement, Biden claimed to have strengthened our military. By abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban? A report this week said that Biden was STILL sending money to the Taliban which, of course, has re-established its safe haven for terrorists and is oppressing the rights of women and others. Why are we still sending money to the Taliban?
As others have written, Biden’s speech was more representational of Democrats’ delusional thinking than the state of the nation. Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave a near-perfect statement in reply. She said the choice Americans face now is not between the right and the left but between the normal and the crazy. She added — in another perfectly factual statement — that Biden has turned his party over to a crazy woke crowd that, among many way-out views, refuses to define what a woman is.
Biden also made no mention of his incompetent response to the Chinese spy balloon other than to say we don’t want war with China. Obviously, we don’t but China might want — actually, need — a war with us.
John Zogby
Grade: A-
President Joe Biden showed up with his A-game this week.
Expectations for his State of the Union message were low. Frankly, if he showed up and ended up still standing it would have been good. However, he ably touted his record of accomplishments, cited bipartisanship where it was appropriate, and explained his vision for the next four years.
Biden certainly undercut those within his own party who were doubtful he is up to the job and he made it very clear why he is most likely running in 2024 by stating on several occasions that he needed to “Finish the job.”
At the same time, he was even more persuasive when he put the opposition on the defensive and answered hecklers. He was at his best when he engaged and forced them — by embarrassing all of the GOP members — to stand with seniors. Speaker Kevin McCarthy tried to shush those who shouted and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell did his best to disown them. But the upshot is that they made the president look better. Biden is no eloquent speaker like JFK or Barack Obama, but he is “Joe” and that was not a bad thing.
Despite criticism, he ordered a Chinese spy balloon to be shot down over the Atlantic and another flying object over Alaska. His approval ratings are inching up and he is still in a close horse race with potential Republican 2024 contenders. This was a very good week.
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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 managing partner Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @ZogbyStrategies
