What US President Joe Biden is remembered for. Parsing
Joe Biden, the outgoing 46th President of the United States, called his achievements the growth of the country's economy, participation in the Paris climate agreement and successes in foreign policy. But experts and American voters assess the president's policy and its consequences quite differently. What Biden managed to achieve as president and what he did not succeed in is analyzed by Izvestia.
What allowed Biden to win in 2020
- Joe Biden became president of the United States in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, he failed twice in the election of the head of state, by all accounts - due to a lack of eloquence. However, during the restrictions due to the coronavirus, the presidential candidate almost never had to appear in public. He also benefited from the fact that citizens blamed his predecessor Donald Trump for the fact that it was his actions that caused the socio-economic crisis in the post-pandemic period. Voters did not vote for Biden, but against Trump.
- Biden's campaign coincided with the death in police custody of African-American George Floyd, who became an icon of the Black Lives Matter movement. The rise of this movement influenced voter support for the Democrat party. But by the end of the Biden administration, another high-profile crime occurred in the United States - the murder of student Laken Riley by an illegal migrant. The circumstances of the girl's death and the general tension in society caused by the influx of migrants played into the hands of the Republicans and brought Donald Trump to power.
Changes in the economy
- During the pandemic, the Biden administration imposed severe restrictions, for which many criticize it, and "quenched" the crisis with money, distributing it to citizens and businesses. The consequence of this policy was inflation, which in the summer of 2021 exceeded 5% for the first time in 30 years and nearly doubled a year later. Biden then explained to voters that the price hikes were due to Russian President Vladimir Putin and rising energy prices - and also solely Russia's fault.
- Biden considers his massive program of infrastructure investment and concern for the climate his main success in office. But even these achievements are criticized by experts for irrational spending and investments in politically motivated "green" projects whose economic efficiency is not obvious.
- In his last address to the nation, Joe Biden warned about the formation of a new oligarchy in the United States, in whose hands power is concentrated, the risks of growth of the digital industry and the collapse of free press. At the same time, the top ten major donors to the Democratic Party include representatives of the crypto-industry, and Ilon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who own large sites and information resources, develop new technologies and the crypto-industry, supported the Democrats during the 2020 elections.
Influence on global processes
- During the four years in power, the administration of Joe Biden significantly weakened the attitude of other countries to the United States as a "world arbiter". During this time, two major conflicts broke out, in each of which Washington took an active part, contributing to their escalation by its actions. However, the first failure was the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, prepared by the administrations of previous presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
- The results of the 2021 evacuation itself, conducted extremely carelessly and accompanied by a terrorist attack and the deaths of Americans and Afghans, were characterized in the United States as a disaster. Even the liberal media did not characterize the withdrawal as anything other than a failure: the Afghan government was unable to hold on to power, the Taliban instantly took over the country, and the United States, according to both Republicans and Democrats, was once again facing the "threat of September 11." Biden came to power with the role of a specialist in foreign policy, but his first year in office made Americans doubt this. Despite this, for the next three years the White House presented it as a success, and in his farewell speech Biden even boasted that he was "the first president not to hand over the war in Afghanistan" to his successor.
- The withdrawal from Afghanistan was controversially praised, but it saved U.S. military lives (although there were no American combat casualties in the last year and a half before the withdrawal) and taxpayer funds. Because of this, the U.S. was able to later allocate more than $200 billion to support Ukraine.
- Biden was able to capitalize on the Ukrainian crisis by providing the American military-industrial complex with orders from European countries, which are arming Kiev with American weapons: as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, the remnants of Soviet armaments in Europe were practically exterminated (we discussed in detail how the American military-industrial complex is getting richer from the conflict in Ukraine here here). Also, the U.S. managed to squeeze Russia on the EU gas market and to replace Russian gas by 60% with its more expensive LNG.
- The second major military conflict that occurred during Biden's term was the escalation of the situation in the Middle East, which began with Hamas taking Israeli hostages and escalated into a military confrontation between four countries in the region and Palestinian groups. However, a few days before the inauguration of Donald Trump for a second term, a truce was reached, and not without US participation. However, according to Western media, the deal was facilitated by the Republican's intervention. And although so far the parties are only in the first stage of negotiations, the expert community agrees that there is a possibility of a long truce in the Gaza Strip.
How Americans will remember him
- Voters, who are traditionally more concerned about domestic politics than foreign policy activities of their leaders, also agree with the negative assessments of Biden's performance by political scientists.
- According to a poll by the Gallup Public Opinion Research Institute, Americans named the migration crisis and the state of the economy as the main problems during Biden's presidential term. Biden received more negative reviews than President Richard Nixon, who voluntarily left office amid the Watergate scandal (37% vs. 30%).
- According to Gallup, the majority of Americans believe that during Joe Biden's presidency the United States has lost its position in the world, the president is also blamed for the record federal debt and failures in migration policy, the growing gap between the rich and the poor and a surge in crime.
- According to respondents, the U.S. under Biden was losing ground in education, counterterrorism, race relations, infrastructure and the nation's energy sector. Polls show that on national defense, immigration and taxes, Biden is behind his predecessors - U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump - and he has fared worse than Obama and Trump on international trade, managing the federal debt and the gap between rich and poor. The only thing the outgoing president excelled at was supporting LGBT (recognized as an extremist movement and banned in Russia).
What schemes are involved in
- The Oversight Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has conducted a thorough investigation into the corrupt ties of President Biden and his family with other nations, including Romania, China, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, as well as with oligarch Elena Baturina, who has fled Russia since 2011. The U.S. president's family and their associates received about $20 million through corruption schemes.
- The Committee also published information about Joe Biden's harassment of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who in 2015 checked the activities of the energy company Burisma for fraud: Hunter Biden was a member of the company's board of directors. During his visit to Kiev, then Vice President Joe Biden demanded that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko fire Prosecutor-General Shokin if the country wanted to receive a $1bn loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Poroshenko secured Shokin's resignation in 2016.
- Opponents dispute the committee's findings against the president, but his son's crimes were confirmed by evidence in court. Hunter Biden was found guilty of three counts of illegal gun possession, for which he faced up to 25 years in prison, as well as tax evasion. At the end of his presidential term, Joe Biden announced the pardon of his son for all criminal offenses that he had committed or could have committed over the past 11 years.
In preparing the material, Izvestia spoke to and took into account the opinions of:
- political scientist, journalist Yuri Svetov;
- Yevgeny Minchenko, political scientist, president of the communications holding Minchenko Consulting.
