'Compare me to the alternative' Biden’s presidency is put to the test

Commander, as the dog is called, last week followed Biden’s other German shepherd, Major, in being cast out of the presidential abode to somewhere in the American boondocks for having the same habit of biting secret service agents and other White House personnel.

Could it be that Major’s and Commander’s irascibility is borne out of a rather unsettled mood right now in the Biden household?

All joking aside, the past week has not been among the best for Biden coming as he has been under attack from both Republicans and Democrats after his administration announced new border walls construction along the US-Mexico frontier in southern Texas.

For his part, Biden has said he was unable to stop the work because the funding was signed off while Donald Trump was president.

But that has not stopped criticism and Republicans accusing him of hypocrisy given that back in 2020, while campaigning for president, Biden promised he would not build another foot of wall if elected.

If nothing else, this stooshie over the border wall has thrown the spotlight on Biden’s record since gaining office, a record that as US President will weigh heavily in his re-election chances as he seeks another term in November 2024.

As Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent of The New York Times observed earlier this year: “Biden’s record looks different depending on the angle from which it is viewed, all the more so in polarised times when voters and viewers migrate to their own corners of the information world for radically different vantage points.”

As Baker added: “The President is either the mature leader fixing the country as he stands against the forces of evil or he is the leader of the forces of evil destroying the country.”

If approval ratings are anything to go by Biden continues to struggle, much to the surprise of some observers who point to a post-pandemic soft landing for the economy,

near-record-low unemployment, steadily falling inflation, and fading recession concerns.

Migrants from Central America yell through a border wall at a U.S. Border Patrol agent after he pulled down a banner 

Economic concerns

That, though, is not how many American voters see it, with a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) poll finding that “58% of voters said the economy has gotten worse over the past two years, whereas only 28% say it has gotten better, and nearly three in four saying inflation is headed in the wrong direction”.

If there is any small consolation for the Biden administration in all of this it’s that the President finds himself at least running neck and neck rather than trailing Trump in a potential rematch of the 2020 election with each holding 46% support in a head-to-head test.

The bottom line here is that many Americans appear not to have come around to Biden and any number of factors might swing such a close election. Voters who dislike both Biden and Trump, or what Republican strategist Whit Ayres has dubbed “the double haters”, then “become a swing voter group that both parties will spend significant time and money trying to win over”.

Acutely aware of this, Biden took very much a presidential tone last week as he urged an end to the “poisonous atmosphere” in Washington and announced a major speech on aid for Ukraine.

Keen to put clear water between his administration and the Republicans, his speech came also in a week in which Biden rolled out a series of voter-friendly announcements on healthcare and $9 billion in student debt relief, while his rivals were reeling with the turmoil thrown up after Republican hardliners ousted House speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The President, too, was decidedly quiet on his likely 2024 rival Trump’s appearance in court in New York on a fraud case.

“Biden being in the background is a very good strategy,” was how Robert Rowland, a political communication expert at the University of Kansas, summed up the President’s approach to the French news agency AFP.

“He should demonstrate he is a strong president and let the Republican bloodbath unfold. He cannot do anything about it, he might as well let the Democrats benefit from it,” said Rowland.

The infighting among the Republicans has even rankled some within their own ranks including Trump, who lamented the bickering that resulted from the coup launched by hardliners against McCarthy.

Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina who is a close Trump ally, said the turmoil means Biden “gets a break and takes the focus and attention away from his many failures in office”.

Certainly, Biden’s current hands-off strategy is not without risk given that if the US becomes paralysed by the political chaos with the House in search of a Speaker and a new budget shutdown looming in November, it’s unlikely the President could remain so “detached”.

That, however, is for the weeks that lie ahead. But what of Biden’s record to date? For as with any incumbent seeking a renewal by voters, there is the record he is running on and the record he is running away from.

Chinese President Xi Jinping 

Referendum on Joe

TO a great extent the 2024 vote will as much as anything be a referendum on Biden’s first term in office. Among the number of key moments that have shaped his presidency to date a few stand out.

One of the most significant was his continuation with the plan to pull US troops out of Afghanistan, a 20-year conflict that had turned into Washington’s longest war.

While opinion polls suggests the decision was popular among Americans, the Afghan government quickly collapsed to the Taliban without putting up a serious fight.

Biden himself would later admit that events unfolded “more quickly than we anticipated”. The resulting plight of ordinary Afghans left at the mercy of the Taliban left an impression in certain quarters of a US president six months into his first term with an inability to think things through.

The subsequent barrage of criticism from Republicans and even some Democrats that prevailed at the time is something in the eyes of Biden’s detractors that still casts a shadow over his presidency to this day.

There have been other key moments too some negative others more positive. No sooner, for example, was Biden in office than he unveiled an ambitious $3 trillion plan dubbed Build Back Better that was to be the core of his self-proclaimed agenda to revive the US economy “from the bottom up and the middle out”.

This involved everything from expanding social safety net programmes to making enormous investments in clean energy, education and housing.

Later, the bill would be scaled back to $1.75 trillion in spending, to be spread over 10 years. Although it was approved by the House of Representatives it was then subsequently dropped amid opposition from two conservative Democrats in the Senate, where Biden’s party had a wafer-thin margin.

While this was undeniably a blow to the President’s agenda, it still did not bar Biden’s administration from passing legislation worth trillions of dollars to further his policies.

Meanwhile, away from the domestic front, Biden’s foreign policy approach is one that some observers say has been one of his stronger points. In only his first two years in office, Biden arguably presided over the most transformative phase in American foreign policy in decades, according to some supporters.

The Afghanistan debacle aside, his administration came into office saying it wanted a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia, but then found itself leading a massive effort to push back against Moscow after it unleashed its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Foreign policy under Biden has also had a sustained focus on China. Barely weeks after entering the White House, he had a phone call with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, setting the tone for a contentious relationship with Beijing. A statement at the time describing the call was straight to the point.

“President Biden underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including towards Taiwan,” it said.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House 

Security goals

PARTISANS within the Biden camp, like US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, argue strongly that the President has achieved the three national security goals that he initially set.

Speaking earlier this year to the Washington Post, Sullivan detailed how the administration had “rebuilt the US economy and rejuvenated the middle class; revived Nato and other global alliances; and withdrew US troops from Afghanistan to focus on current threats, rather than the day after 9/11”.

But other analysts like Kori Schake, a senior fellow and director of foreign and defence policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute disagree, insisting that Biden’s presidency has not “vindicated” the “optimism or promise” that “America is back”, as he declared on coming into office.

As an example, Schake, writing in the magazine Foreign Affairs, cites how “Biden’s desire to protect US workers and boost US-based industries has found itself at odds with the imperative of building an alliance to contain the threat of China”.

How all this plays out in terms of Biden’s 2024 bid for re-election remains to be seen. But policies aside there are those who think he should simply not be standing at all.

Top Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, a foreign affairs writer at the newspaper, is one of those who acknowledges Biden’s legacy of accomplishments during his first few years in office but maintains he should not stand next year.

“In sum, he has been a successful and effective president,” Ignatius wrote. “But I don’t think Biden and vice-President Kamala Harris should run for re-election. It’s painful to say that, given my admiration for much of what they have accomplished,” Ignatius continued. “But if he and Harris campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement – which was stopping Trump.”

Ignatius also singles out Biden’s age as a factor and real liability – and he is not alone. In a recent poll from the Associated Press and Norc Center for Public Affairs, three out of every four Americans said Biden was too old for a second term at the end of which he would be 86. Should either Biden or Trump prevail in the election next year they would be the oldest person to win the presidency.

Biden supporters remain quick, however, to point out that he should be judged on his performance, not his age. They argue that there is an unbalanced quality to the debate over the issue. With Biden 80 and Trump 77, only a few years separate them, they argue.

Claims, too, of Biden’s mental decline making him unfit for office jar with the shortcomings of his predecessor who faces numerous indictments including for the subversion of American democracy.

Pulling few punches, the American political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen, a contributor to MSNBC, recently made this very point.

“The problem is that the people who’ve been perpetuating this narrative [about Biden] seem pretty willing to overlook the fact that their political deity, Donald Trump, doesn’t seem to be working with a full deck of cards –

a point that’s become progressively evident these past few weeks.

“Like, for example, when he suggested that he defeated Obama in the 2016 election. Or, when he claimed that World War II hadn’t happened yet. Or, when he said that Jeb Bush got us into the Iraq War.”

Trump card

For those who back Biden, the first argument for re-electing him, they say, is Donald Trump. It’s a case Biden himself reminded audience members of during a speech at the White House Correspondent’s dinner in April this year.

“Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative,” Biden joked, much to the amusement of the many guests and journalists that were present.

But jokes aside, the closer to next year’s election America gets, the more Biden’s scorecard since being in office will be rigorously examined and pored over.

Only the American people can decide whether his record is up to scratch. If they give it a thumbs up then he stays.

A thumbs down for the Commander-in-Chief, on the other hand, could well find Biden cast out from the White House in much the same way as Commander, his pet German shepherd – only this time though for not having not enough bite.