Transcript
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Will K. Back (2:09)
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. I'm your host Editor Will K. Back and today we're going to be talking about a pretty massive issue. Joe Biden's Presidency. Specifically, a retrospective on Joe Biden's presidency. This is a project we have previewed in Tangle over the past few weeks, but we've really been talking about it since Biden's presidency started. You know, when we cover the various actions and issues that happened on his watch and during his term, we would mention from time to time that we would be rating his response or evaluating how he did in the end of term review that was coming depending on when his term ended. And now here we are Donald Trump was inaugurated on Monday, and Biden officially left office, and it feels like the appropriate time to look back on his term and try to evaluate it as best we can. We'll talk a little bit about the challenge of doing that and some of the ways in which we're inevitably going to fall short. But this is a pretty holistic piece, and we think it'll give you at least a good starting sense of the kinds of promises Biden made, how he did on them, and the way he responded to challenges that were unforeseen or unexpected. So without further ado, let's get into it. Tangle's review of Joe Biden's presidency the improbability of Joe Biden's presidency can be easy to forget. His 2020 campaign began with a stumble announced by accident at a dinner roughly one month before he would officially declare his strategy in the Democratic primary was premised in part on the belief that the party was older and less progressive than his opponents thought, a pretty audacious gamble in the political climate of 2019. Biden failed to place in the top three in either the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary, pushing his campaign to brink basically from the start. Then the flip A strong showing with black voters propelled him to second in the Nevada caucuses, and Representative Jim Clyburn's endorsement helped make his victory in South Carolina's primary a landslide. Soon after, the Democratic establishment coalesced around Biden and he became the presumptive nominee in early April, as Biden was hurtling to the top of the ticket, the COVID 19 pandemic was shutting down the United States and the world, upending expectations for the 2020 election. The new York Times wrote that Biden was, quote, seeking the presidency from his basement as he ran a mostly remote campaign. What followed is far fresher in memory, the multi day effort to determine the election winner between Biden and then President Trump amid a surge of pandemic, inspired mail in voting, Biden's eventual victory, Trump's claims of election fraud and refusal to concede the January 6th Capitol riot and finally Biden's inauguration. Four years later. Here we are, Trump is again president, and Biden leaves office with an uncertain legacy and a leaderless Democratic Party behind him. So much has changed in that time, most notably the formal end of the pandemic and the onset of issues like inflation and new wars abroad. In Tuesday's edition on Trump's second inauguration, we wrote that the country feels like it is, quote, at a hinge point amid shifting political allegiances and global backlash against incumbent leaders. With the start of a new presidential administration, it's natural to look to the future and at tangle. We're going to do just that. But before we start giving all of President Trump's moves their deserved close reads, we wanted to conduct a thorough review of President Biden's term in true tangle fashion by taking a deep look at whether Biden fulfilled his core promises and how he tackled the key challenges he faced. While we aim to be as thorough as possible in this analysis, capturing all of the nuances of an office as vast as the American presidency in a single piece is impossible. We'll undoubtedly miss some aspects of Biden's record or fail to capture the full essence of some of his decisions, but we're confident that you'll come away from this edition with a holistic understanding of the issues and policies that defined his term. And as always, if you disagree with our analysis, if you think we missed the mark or want to discuss any of these pieces further, don't hesitate to write in with that. Let's jump in. Part 1 Biden's core promises Joe Biden, like all presidents, made a lot of promises on the campaign trail and after he took office. For this section, we identified 12 core areas where Biden made promises based on a review of his campaign materials and speeches, the 2020 Democratic Party platform, which was developed from a report organized by the Biden and Bernie Sanders campaigns, and the Biden Harris administration's Immediate Priorities List published shortly after their term started. From there, we evaluated how Biden performed on each promise using both objective and subjective metrics, which we'll explore for each issue. That assessment was then boiled down to a promise meter. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest rating, the promise was completely fulfilled and one being the lowest, the promise was not fulfilled in any way. We are not trying to evaluate whether these are good or effective policies, but simply whether Biden accomplished what he said he would. First COVID 19 what Biden promised Biden featured increased testing, reopening schools and businesses, and launching a national vaccination program in his pandemic response strategy. The 2020 Democratic Party platform likewise said that COVID testing, treatment and vaccinations would be free for all Americans and vowed to work with the private sector manufacturers to scale up the United States domestic manufacturing capacity for both personal protective equipment and essential medicines. Broadly, Biden promised to get Covid under control and put the country back on a path to normalcy. What happened in a basic sense Biden delivered on the thrust of this promise. Most of US Society has now returned to what it was before the pandemic. We go about our daily lives without government restrictions. Masks are largely a thing of the past, and hundreds of millions of people have been vaccinated at least once in Biden's first year. He struggled to contain the virus, though Delta and omicron variants caused surges in hospitalizations and deaths. And in January 2022, the Washington Post reported on how Biden's 200 page pandemic plan was falling short with the groups it was meant to support healthcare workers, nursing home residents, teachers and young families primarily. Still, the US did make tangible progress against the pandemic as vaccines were rolled out and approximately 70% of the population was fully vaccinated in Novemb 2022, a significantly higher percentage than the global median. The US was one of the country's hardest hit by the pandemic, but it's difficult to pin that outcome solely on poor management, especially on Biden's part. A 2023 Brown University study identified a vast array of issues the country's pandemic response ranging from deficiencies in the US Healthcare system to existing preparedness capacities not functioning as expected. Biden took over at one of the darkest points of the pandemic, so he was working from a deficit on day one. Furthermore, Trump's handling of the early days of COVID has aged progressively worse, which also compels us to give Biden some additional leeway in assessing his early response. Overall, he came through on some aspects of his plan. He did roll out a vast and for much of the pandemic free vaccination program. And he did secure funds to support states and localities dealing with public health expenses and tax shortfalls from shuttered businesses. We'll discuss the impact of the American rescue plan on inflation a little bit later. But relative to the pandemic, that bill provided massive support for individuals and institutions and services, which also fulfilled one of Biden's signature promises. Broadly, he set the country on a path to a robust economic recovery that has significantly outpaced peer countries. However, other promises, like reopening schools in the first 100 days and maintaining widespread access to testing, fell noticeably short. So with all this in mind, on his promises related to Covid, we give Biden a 7 out of 10 next immigration what was promised Biden made rolling back the Trump administration's restrictive immigration policies a key goal of his presidential campaign. Furthermore, he promised to implement new policies that would more easily allow migrants and asylum seekers to attain legal status. What happened? Many of Biden's policies were true to his promises. Only a few days into his term, he reinstated Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as daca, and signed legislation that offered unauthorized migrants a path to legal citizenship. He also took steps to end separations and unite families. In 2024, Biden announced the Keeping Families Together policy to aid US citizen spouses who did not have legal status. These policies were incredibly effective relative to the promises Biden made. And as the Biden administration oversaw nearly 3.5 million naturalizations between 2021 and and 2024, by far the most for a single administration, it's easy to see how he fulfilled this aspect of what he said he would do. With these achievements, though, came persistent trouble at the border. The number of migrant Encounters spiked after 2020, reaching a peak of roughly 250,000 in December 2023 alone. Border facilities, cities and states were overwhelmed by the volume of migrants, and Biden faced criticism from both the right and the left for mishandling the crisis. Ultimately, Biden would respond by reinstituting some of Trump's stricter policies, and that included continuing the controversial policy title 42. But because he delivered on the promises he made to voters, Biden's score on immigration, an issue that held him back throughout his campaign and really his whole presidency, comes in remarkably high. You might be surprised for the score we're about to give him, but the biggest knock on him is subjective. He can't be credited too highly for achieving his goals if in the process he contributed to some severe unintended consequences. That said, we'll discuss his legacy on immigration a little bit later in this edition. For now, though, his Promise Meter rating for Immigration is a 7 out of 10.