Joe Biden is a total disaster only Trump could help

Lame-duck president ... Joe Biden. Picture: AFP

It’s clear now that Joe Biden’s presidency so far has been a political disaster. The only area of policy that looks fairly good, lucky for us, is the administration’s China policy, which is essentially a continuation of the bipartisan position established under Donald Trump.

It’s tempting to focus on Biden’s endless, bizarre verbal gaffes. The most celebrated recently was his reading out the instructions on the teleprompter: “end of quote, repeat the line”. But even when Biden was sharper than he is now, he was always one of those politicians who routinely became all jumbled up verbally.

Much more important are the clear policy mistakes Biden has made. With, as I say, the critical exception of China policy, this is all bad news for Australia. We prosper best, geo-strategically and generally economically as well, when the US is well and coherently led. I don’t think Biden can possibly run again in 2024, which raises the question of whether the US is settling into a dysfunctional pattern of failed one-term presidencies. Biden is already a lame duck.

How much trouble is Biden in politically? The answer is lots and lots. The RealClearPolitics average of polls has his approval at 38 per cent and his disapproval at 56 per cent. Some polls are much worse than that. Even more telling, only 19 per cent think their country is heading in the right direction, while 74 per cent think it’s on the wrong track.

Right direction/wrong track is generally a measure of the presidency. The two polls together spell disaster for the Democrats in November’s congressional elections. Even after the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade guarantee of universal abortion rights, which was broadly unpopular according to polls and which Democrats hoped would help them in November, Republicans are still well ahead of Democrats in generic congressional voting intentions.

A majority of Americans don’t want Biden to run for the presidency again. Critically, The New York Times has turned against him, running snide commentary now on his verbal gaffes and many historical fantasies about himself. Biden would be just shy of 82 at the next election. His candidacy is completely implausible. His low-wattage Vice-President, Kamala Harris, would not, I think, win the Democratic primary.

Biden was elected because he projected an avuncular, culturally centrist, reassuring return to normality after the chaos and drama of Trump. But he has delivered, China policy excepted, consistently bad policy way to the left of his former identity. This is disastrous for the US.

Start with inflation. This is a shocking 9.1 per cent, which is killing middle-class savings and devastating the poor. Biden is responsible for much of it. He distorted the economy on both the demand side and the supply side. He secured a $US1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and nearly got a $US4 trillion Build Back Better monstrosity passed, saved only by the sensible Democratic senator Joe Manchin.

If you create vast amounts of new money, money itself loses some value – that’s inflation. It’s fine if you own big assets because they go up in price astronomically. If you don’t own assets or you live on a relatively fixed income, you suffer. Inflation born of government spending, like most big progressive schemes, redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich.

On the supply side, Biden screwed US energy production. He banned pipelines, stopped exploration of federal lands, discouraged fracking, all in pursuit of an overhasty renewable energy fantasy. The result was disaster. America was energy self-sufficient under Trump. Now energy prices have skyrocketed. Biden has just finished a humiliating trip to Saudi Arabia begging the Saudis to increase oil production.

The US economy, like all modern economies, cannot function without coal, oil and gas. Smart environmentalists try to emphasise gas. Biden, who moved far left after his election, accepted the demonisation of all fossil fuels. But this has led to an insane contradiction in US policy. This is not a right-wing debating point, it is the simple truth. The Biden administration, until five minutes ago, did everything it could to discourage US coal, oil and gas production, yet it is out begging Middle East authoritarians to increase their oil production so US consumers pay less for oil.

The three nations with significant spare oil capacity are Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela. In what mental universe does it make sense for the US, and other Western nations, to pay those autocracies, plus Russia, near record commodity prices while making themselves feel good by restricting their own fossil fuel production, which would take place under much more stringent environmental conditions?

There are countless other policy failures by the Biden administration. None is worse than the explosion of illegal immigration on the US southern border. This has contributed to a deeply disturbing trend for Democrats.

More Hispanics than ever are now Republican voters. George W. Bush in his re-election won 40 per cent of the Hispanic vote. It’s hard for a Republican to lose with that level of Hispanic support. Trump won 38 per cent of Hispanics in 2020, 8 per cent more than he won in 2016. Indeed, another 2 per cent of Hispanics and Trump would likely have won re-election. Recently, Mayra Flores became the first Mexican-born woman elected to congress. She’s a conservative Republican and won a Texan district that had never voted Republican before.

Like millions of other Hispanics, she is strongly in favour of legal immigration to the US and strongly against illegal immigration. The Hispanic turn to the Republican Party seems a deep trend. They still vote majority Democrat but by ever smaller margins.

Three causes suggest themselves. Hispanics are diverse and not defined by their ethnicity. They tend to be more religious than other Americans and find contemporary Democrats anti-religion. And finally, they have been politically liberal but socially conservative. They honour police and want them in their neighbourhoods. They are patriotic Americans who don’t like woke Democrat badmouthing of America. They esteem military service and sign up disproportionately.

The only thing that could save the Democrats, and the Biden presidency, is Trump-induced nuttiness among Republicans. If Trump declares his candidacy for the presidency the mid-terms could end up being too much about him and too little about Biden and his record.

A Republican congress after November could hurt Biden with investigations into Hunter Biden’s alleged criminality, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and other issues. That we have good US China policy in the midst of all this is a fantastic, almost unbelievable, blessing. Nonetheless, the Biden presidency is shaping as a historic failure. And when America fails, the world gets sick.