A Review of President Biden’s First Year in Office

Last updated on February 15, 2022

As Biden concludes one year in office, he can be seen as a president who attempted to be FDR but ultimately became Jimmy Carter.

Everything after the separator is the opinion of this article’s author.

This past Wednesday, the Outspoken Oppa conducted a poll that accessed our readers’ approval on the Biden administration’s first year in office. The poll outlined the Biden administration’s accomplishments and failures so far.

What Biden Accomplished in His First Year 

• passed a $1.9 trillion relief package through Congress
• increased COVID-19 testing 
• enforced mask mandates on federal property
• encouraged 63% of Americans to receive the COVID-19 vaccine 
• passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill with bipartisan support
• created 6.4 million jobs
• dropped unemployment to 3.9%

The poll additionally listed what he failed to accomplish. 

What Biden Has Not Accomplished in His First Year

• failed to institute federal vaccine mandates for employers 
• failed to pass his “Build Back Better” bill 
• failed to pass election reform
• failed to amend filibuster rules 
• failed to reverse Trump’s corporate tax cuts 
• failed to raise the federal minimum wage to $15
• failed to successfully pull all American soldiers, citizens, and green card holders out of Afghanistan
• failed to negotiate a nuclear arms reduction with Iran 
• failed to meet economists’ employment projections for 2021
• presided over record-high levels of illegal immigration at the US-Mexico Border
• presided over an inflation rate of 6.8%, which is the highest rate in 39 years
• presided over a consequential global supply chain shortage 

The poll then showed the president’s approval ratings. According to a Quinnipiac poll conducted between January 7th and January 10th, Biden has a 33% approval rating. 

• 35% approval rating among registered voters
• 57% disapproval rating on his handling of the economy 
• 54% disapproval rating on his handling of foreign policy 
• 55% disapproval rating on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic 
• 43% say the GOP should take the House; 42% say the Democrats should
• 45% say the GOP should take the Senate; 41% say the Democrats should 

After 24 hours, the poll concluded that, among 119 respondents, 23% approved of Biden’s first year, and 77% disapproved of Biden’s first year. 

This poll is an exact reversal from a poll the Outspoken Oppa conducted a week after Biden took office on January 28, 2021. The results of that poll were 77% approved and 23% disapproved. 

On April 26th, the Outspoken Oppa conducted another poll right after the Biden administration hit the 100-day mark. The poll showed that 55% approved, and 45% disapproved. 

On August 27th, 219 days after taking office, an Outspoken Oppa poll found that 36% approved of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, and 64% disapproved. 

The current approval rating among our readers is less than the national average. Recently, the Associated Press found Biden now has a 56% disapproval rating. However, our figure is more similar to the percentage of Americans who want him to run for reelection, which is 28%. The poll also found that only 48% of the president’s party wants him to run again. 

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Joe Biden was elected for one reason: he was not Trump. He did not win 81 million votes because of his groundbreaking policies on healthcare, climate change, or economic reform. He won because the person he ran against had a detrimental obsession with Twitter. However, Biden believed the 2020 election was not a referendum on Trump but an election in support of sweeping liberalism. 

On the economy, Biden pursued the largest government spending bills since World War II. He proposed nearly 10 trillion dollars in social spending and passed around 3 trillion dollars, which arguably inflated the dollar to record heights. He presided over a consequential global supply chain shortage that dramatically increased prices and harmed employment. During multiple points of his administration, job openings exceeded unemployment figures, marking 2021 as the “Great Resignation”- a title that looms over the Biden economic agenda. 

On foreign policy, the Biden administration did not communicate with allies on the Afghanistan withdrawal and dramatically underestimated the Taliban. His quick withdrawal was a debacle that lead to grave security risks and the ISIS-K terrorist attack that murdered 13 American service troops. In retaliation, the United States Pentagon conducted a drone strike on what they believed to be an ISIS-K operative but ended up killing 10 Afghan citizens, including seven children. Nobody at the Pentagon, including the defense secretary or the president, was held responsible for this gross negligence and damning blunder.

On domestic policy, he failed to pass any legislation except his initial 1.9 trillion-dollar COVID-19 relief package and 1.2 trillion-dollar infrastructure bill. The reason for the gridlock in Congress was due to Biden’s inability to sway Senators Manchin and Sinema in support of his legislative agenda. 

Due to the makeup of Congress, Biden could not pass large portions of what he promised to the American electorate, effectively making him the first president in US history to become a lame duck in his first year. 

The fact remains that the majority of the nation has lost confidence in Biden. Ever since the foreign policy debacle that was the Afghanistan withdrawal, Biden is seen as an incompetent and ineffective political leader. I have serious doubts the DNC will renominate Biden for the presidency because this administration is finished. 

For my predictions in 2024, I point to what happened in the 1970s and 1980s. In the mid-1970s, the Republican Party was stained by the Watergate scandal under President Nixon. In the 1976 presidential election, Gerald Ford, who assumed the presidency after Nixon’s resignation, lost because he could not shake the stench of Nixon’s legacy, and Jimmy Carter was elected as a referendum against Nixon. 

Carter presided over historic inflation rates of around 12% brought on by an energy crisis stemming from oil embargoes. It was not until 1983, after Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker raised the interest rates by 20%, did the inflation rate decrease to a little over 3%. 

Despite Carter nominating Volker, it was too late. Carter was stained with high inflation rates, and Reagan decimated Carter by winning 489 electoral votes. For all of the 1980s, Republicans controlled the White House, sweeping three consecutive presidential elections.

Now, history repeats. In 2021, after Jan. 6, the Republican Party was stained by Trump, who cost them the White House and the Senate majority. However, with the failures of the Biden presidency comes a red wave that will control both chambers of Congress in 2022 and then the presidency again in 2024. 

Biden is a lame duck, and the Democrats know it. If they want to avoid irrelevancy for the next decade, then they better find a candidate like Bill Clinton to shake the Biden stain.