Biden’s Long Shadow

By Matthew Continetti

Saturday, September 21, 2024

 

The latest New York Times/Siena College poll has some cautionary data for Kamala Harris and the KHive. The Times found Harris winning Pennsylvania by four points, just outside the margin of error, but deadlocked with Donald Trump nationwide. While Harris beats Trump by 13 points on who best will handle abortion, Trump beats Harris by 13 points on the economy, twelve points on the border, and eight points on Ukraine.

 

Among independents, Trump leads by four points. Asked if Harris represents change or more of the same, 52 percent of voters said more of the same. By contrast, 59 percent said Trump represents change. He’s the disrupter in a year when, according to RealClearPolitics, 61 percent of voters say the country is on the wrong track.

 

Harris shoulders a burden: Joe Biden. The president’s job approval remains low at 42 percent. His personal favorability, also 42 percent, lags behind both Trump’s (45 percent) and Harris’s (49 percent). This makes Harris’s job more difficult. Running for the White House as a sitting vice president is hard enough. Yet the two most recent vice presidents who did it benefited from having bosses who were more popular than they were. That is a luxury Harris does not enjoy.

 

The nonjudicial legacies of previous one-termers, from Carter to Bush to (perhaps) Trump, have been mixed but relatively short-lived. Carter’s foreign and economic policies were a mess until a late-term correction. Bush was a foreign-policy champ whose domestic policies satisfied few. Biden is unusual. He’s a declared one-termer whose consequences, both foreign and domestic, will be long-lasting and negative.

 

No miss has been greater than Biden’s retreat from Afghanistan. Yes, Trump inked the deal with the Taliban. But that doesn’t mean Biden had to abide by it when the Islamic militia fired on U.S. troops and moved to conquer Afghan cities. Biden’s obsession with leaving the country by the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks endangered U.S. personnel, U.S. matériel, and countless Afghan allies and civilians.

 

The botched evacuation led to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members. American citizens were abandoned. And the fallout was only beginning. The Taliban has reimposed its medieval, nihilistic rule, resuming public executions, and subjecting Afghan women and girls to a terrible fate. ISIS-K has regrouped. The spillover affects Pakistan, a nuclear power. There’s a reason Biden’s job approval never rose above 50 percent after the Afghanistan debacle. It was his worst decision by far.

 

There have been plenty of other mistakes. The Biden foreign policy is an index of error. Entries include the belief that concessions on energy and arms control would pacify Vladimir Putin; pandering to the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority and Iran; and calling for cuts to defense spending as global risks multiplied. Building diplomatic off-ramps for Vladimir Putin didn’t dissuade him from launching the first major land war in Europe since 1945. Endlessly negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program did not put out the ring of fire that the mullahs had traced around Israel. Real cuts to defense spending — before factoring in the effects of inflation — eroded the U.S. deterrent and defense-industrial base. Russia, Iran, and China noticed.

 

Wars in Ukraine and Israel have had a terrible cost. The mini-war in the Red Sea against the Houthis, another Iranian proxy, has done more than interrupt global trade. It’s the U.S. Navy’s largest sustained action since World War II.

 

No end is in sight. Biden’s concept of “escalation management” has prolonged these conflicts and made them more dangerous. He’s slow-walked aid to Ukraine and restricted its use, giving Putin an edge and putting America in the ridiculous situation where we won’t provide Ukraine weapons because we’re worried about our own stockpiles. His endless and futile quest for a cease-fire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas has convinced the terrorist group that it has a chance of victory. Israel faces U.S. pressure while Hamas’s handmaidens, Egypt and Qatar, sit and watch. Meanwhile, Iran ramps up its nuclear program and plots its next move.

 

Immigration policy was a mess before Biden reversed Trump’s executive orders and opened the southern border. Millions have entered the country in the years since. Immigrants now make up 14 percent of the total population, close to the record 15 percent set in 1890. The social price tag of placing, housing, schooling, and providing for these newcomers is high. And it’s a price most Americans are unwilling to pay. A June Gallup poll found majority support for decreasing immigration. A recent Scripps News/Ipsos poll showed that 54 percent of Americans support mass deportation of illegal immigrants.

 

The stock market cheered the Federal Reserve’s announcement Wednesday that it would lower the government’s benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point. Yet the benchmark rate is still about five points higher than it was when Biden took office. Mortgage and car loan rates are even higher. The Fed was caught off guard in 2021 when the spending unleashed by Biden’s multitrillion-dollar American Rescue Plan — and his Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, CHIPS Act, and Inflation Reduction Act — collided with a rapidly recovering economy. When inflation arrived, Biden said it would be temporary. Then, as it continued and grew worse, Biden blamed it on supply chains. Then he blamed it on Putin. Then he blamed it on corporations. Then Biden said inflation had been tamed, only to see Harris blame it on price gougers.

 

Last week’s census data showed median inflation-adjusted household income rising in 2023 for the first time since 2019. But workers, especially low-wage workers, continue to struggle in an economy that has not achieved price stability or surging incomes. Biden hasn’t just presided over disappointing economic circumstances for ordinary people. His spending and regulations helped create those circumstances. Compound the lost wealth with lost learning from school closures that Biden did little to end during his first months in office, and the toll is staggering. And enduring.

 

“I’m not here to take a victory lap,” Biden told the Economic Club of Washington on Thursday. Nor should he. Biden’s long shadow will haunt America for years. Which is why Kamala Harris is so desperate to escape it.