During his four years in the White House, President Joe Biden seemingly careened from one crisis to the next, quickly losing the trust of the American people and never regaining it. Some will cast Biden as a victim of circumstances, while others will argue that his wounds were self-inflicted. Either way, they likely played a role in sinking the electoral hopes of his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, and returning President-elect Donald Trump to the White House.
Three issues stand out from the pack as Biden’s biggest blunders as president — the issues that turned the greatest number of Americans against him. As the Biden administration quickly transitions from “here” to “history,” a brief review of that history will illustrate how Biden lost American’s trust and — hopefully — deter future administrations from making the same mistakes.
1. Foreign Policy
Biden ordered American forces to evacuate Afghanistan by an arbitrary deadline of August 31, 2021, despite warnings from his advisors of the consequences that might follow such a decision. Without U.S. support, the democratic government in Afghanistan quickly folded to the aggression of Taliban militias. As a result, the Taliban captured $83 billion worth of U.S. military equipment, and a suicide bombing killed 13 U.S. servicemembers at the Kabul airport before the evacuation was completed.
After 20 years of beating back Taliban radicals at great cost, the U.S. under Biden quickly threw away all our gains and left the Taliban stronger than ever. Not only did we abandon our local allies and Afghan Christians to the cruel mercies of the Taliban, but the Biden administration even left American citizens stranded in the country with no way home. Throughout and after this disorderly withdrawal, the Biden administration repeatedly misrepresented the situation, professing a public surprise at the outcome that contradicted internal reports.
Six months later, emboldened by this display of American weakness, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a multi-pronged invasion of its smaller neighbor Ukraine, which the Biden administration expected would surrender within a week. That war, which began in February 2022, is nearing its third anniversary as forces on both sides are ground down in a costly stalemate. The Biden administration enabled and prolonged the war by slow-rolling military aid to Ukraine and placing senseless restrictions on the weapons we did deliver.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration reversed sanctions on Iran and resumed funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which is closely linked to the Iran-backed terror group Hamas. Iran repaid this favor when Hamas launched an unprovoked attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. Iran and its network of terrorist proxies have not only attacked Israel, but they have also targeted U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, as well as U.S. ships in the Red Sea. Over the past 15 months, Israel has skillfully and successfully neutralized most of their Iranian-backed foes, despite American efforts to arm-twist them into accepting an unsafe peace.
These global hotspots are spilling over international borders, destabilizing other nations as well. Islamist rebels recently toppled the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, which relied on support from thinly-stretched Russia and prostrate Iran. North Korean soldiers have joined Russia’s war against Ukraine, worrying the South Korean government so much that it veered into a constitutional crisis. China continues to grow more aggressive towards Taiwan. The effects of these foreign policy conflicts could continue far beyond Biden’s single term.
2. The Economy
When President Biden assumed office, Congress had already passed multiple stimulus packages totaling trillions of dollars during the mandatory shutdowns in response to COVID-19. As a result, the Consumer Price Index inflation rate rose from 1.4% in January 2021 to 5.4% in June 2021. By this point, it should have been obvious that the U.S. government needed to take immediate, corrective action.
However, at that point, Biden was asking Congress to pass another $4 trillion worth of spending on a progressive wish list. So, in June 2021 Biden claimed that inflation was “transitory” and that “no serious economist” thought unchecked inflation was on the way. Biden only convinced Congress — then controlled by his own party — to spend about half that amount, broken into separate bills. One of those bills was named the “Inflation Reduction Act,” but economists concluded its “impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
Inflation peaked in July 2022 at 9.1%, the highest rate since 1981. By then, the U.S. Federal Reserve began to raise interest rates to counter inflation, but Biden tried to take credit for the (too slow) decline in the inflation rate (meanwhile, families continued to suffer from the cumulative rise in prices). Rising prices hurt families, causing many to accumulate credit card debt to make ends meet. Then rising interest rates walloped home payments, pushing home ownership far out of reach for many Americans. The rising interest rates also raised payments on the rapidly growing federal debt, causing federal interest payments to top $1 trillion per year in late 2024.
As Biden’s reelection campaign ramped up, he tried to take credit for fixing inflation by claiming that inflation was 9% when he took office. Even CNN called him on that falsehood. He tried to take credit for job creation, but a massive downward revision of official estimates in August 2024 wiped out almost every job Biden thought he had created in his four years in office. This simply confirmed the anecdotal perception many people already had about the economy; their paycheck didn’t go as far as it used to, and no amount of rhetoric would convince them otherwise.
3. Immigration
When President Biden took office, he rescinded Trump administration policies that had effectively slowed the number of illegal border crossings down to a trickle — most notably a policy allowing for expedited deportation of migrants with no legitimate asylum claim and a policy requiring migrants to remain in Mexico while their asylum claims were adjudicated. These policy changes inspired more foreigners — not only from Latin America but from all over the world — to make the dangerous journey to America’s southern border. Illegal border crossings surged to unheard-of levels: 3.2 million in FY 2023, 2.9 million in FY 2024, and a sum total of more than eight million encounters during Biden’s four years in office, besides 1.7 million known “gotaways.”
Instead of stemming the flood, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chose to “prepare for and manage” it. In practice, this meant letting everyone into the country and giving them an initial court date years into the future. In a rare burst of government innovation, the DHS pioneered new strategies to get migrants into the country faster, such as the CBP One App, where foreigners could sign up on their phones for free flights into the United States. The Biden administration even opposed Texas’s efforts to secure its border on its own dime.
Biden, his border czar Kamala Harris, and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas kept insisting that none of this posed a problem, that everything was fine at the border. As late as March 2023, Mayorkas claimed that the border was secure. Meanwhile, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz admitted that his agents did not have “operational control” of the border — which means that criminal gangs were able to come and go as they pleased.
By August 2024, a House subcommittee found that the Biden administration had released “at least 99” illegal border crossers on the terror watchlist. Criminal gangs infiltrated the country and set up shop in U.S. cities with lax prosecution. Some of these gangs are trafficking children across the border to force them into prostitution.
Even setting aside the border jumpers with bad intentions, the overwhelming flood of migrants overwhelmed the ability of American cities — from New York City to Springfield, Ohio — to provide for them adequately. Even Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Democrats in deep-blue cities, are unhappy with the influx of migrants Biden’s policies have invited.
In a last-ditch effort to reclaim public opinion, the Biden administration contemplated returning to Trump policies they had abandoned — even while claiming there was nothing wrong with their approach. Fundamentally, however, Biden’s approach never changed; the only problem he saw at the southern border was a public relations headache. In his final year, his plans to address the border crisis still did more to enhance illegal immigration than to shut it down — proposals that even members of his own party called “political theater.”
Conclusion
Thus, Biden’s costliest errors came on foreign policy, the economy, and immigration. While the Biden administration expended gargantuan efforts to curate the news cycle to their liking, they stumbled on the very fundamentals of running the government of the most powerful, prosperous country on earth. To make matters worse, this upheaval over bread-and-butter issues was exactly the opposite of the “return to normalcy” Biden promised. When a government’s policy failures directly affect people’s daily lives, no amount of media spin can keep them from noticing.
A government’s most fundamental mission is to promote human flourishing, specifically the welfare of its own people. As a wise man once said, “This is gain for a land in every way: a king committed to cultivated fields” (Ecclesiastes 5:9).
This article appeared originally here.
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