You don’t have to be blind to the sitting president’s flaws to see that his predecessor is much worse.
Though nearly everything Strassel says about Biden comes straight from GOP talking points, perhaps because I am a former Republican myself, with lingering attachments to various Reaganite policy positions, I finished reading her volume feeling surprisingly persuaded by some of her points. On the evidence she presents, Biden, like Jimmy Carter before him, is a deeply flawed president.
But then, of course, there is all the evidence Strassel does not present.
Despite unremitting GOP opposition, and in this era of extreme polarization, Biden has some bipartisan accomplishments to his name, including the infrastructure bill, about which Strassel says the “GOP was too easily gulled into the deal.” The economy under Biden has been a job-creating engine, with unemployment at a fifty-year low and far exceeding Trump in the number of jobs created during his presidency. Indeed, thanks to COVID, three million jobs were lost under Trump. Whatever policy blunders Biden made that contributed to inflation, it cannot be ignored (though Strassel largely does ignore it) that inflation has been a worldwide phenomenon and blame cannot fairly be placed on Biden’s doorstep alone. In any event, the Federal Reserve has now brought inflation down to a 3 percent annual rate without inducing a recession (yet).
As for Ukraine, while one can agree with Strassel that Biden has been laggard in supplying advanced arms to Ukraine, she fails to acknowledge the mastery, against expectations, that Biden has demonstrated in leading the NATO alliance in support of Ukraine. It has been no small thing to steer a coalition of 32 counties through such a dangerous conflict.