Due to the chaos of the exit in Kabul, the approval ratings for Joe Biden are in free fall. Now he is visiting the hurricane areas in the role of the caring president – but the real challenges of his term of office are only ahead of him.
With a light blue shirt and his typical combination of sunglasses and black mask, Joe Biden visited the town of Manville south of New York City. He saw tattered houses and furniture, land cordoned off with tape and desperate people. A few days ago, cyclone “Ida” had passed through here, destroyed houses and killed people. Later, the US President sat in front of pallets of water bottles and food boxes and said that “we have to do something” against climate change, which is advancing at “incredible speed”.
Hurricane “Katrina” once left Bush indifferent
Appointments like in New Jersey are among the less pleasant, but are understandably demanded by heads of state – if only for reasons of solidarity. But not only. In 2005, the then US President George W. Bush fell on his mismanagement of the hurricane “Katrina” crisis, and that he just went on vacation despite the disaster. Such stuffiness has been taboo for the White House ever since – and, as cynical as it may sound, for Joe Biden the images of him wading caringly through the rubble are just right.
In a year at the latest, the election campaign is raging again in the USA. Then there are only two months left until the mid-term elections, it is about the supremacy in the Senate and the House of Representatives – and thus also about the last two years in office for the current incumbent. Basically, however, there is always an election campaign: Be it in concrete terms, as will soon be in California, where the Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has to face a kind of vote of no confidence. Or in general, when it comes to approving government policy. And that’s where the US President was last plucked badly.
and that despite the fact that until recently he had led the approval polls by ten percentage points and more. The day the tide turned against him can be precisely dated. It was immediately after the Taliban took Kabul and took control of Afghanistan. The US troops, not even fully withdrawn, were humiliated. And with them their supreme commander, the US President. The fact that a few days later 13 US soldiers were killed in an attack at the airport, an attack that the secret services had guarded against, fitted into the disastrous overall picture.
Biden’s tenure started off smoothly
The Kabul debacle is the first major mortgage that Biden will have to drag through his tenure over the next few months or even years. It had actually started very smoothly: The number of vaccinations administered rose rapidly, exactly as promised. He has at least brought a gigantic trillion dollars for the ailing infrastructure on the way. Above all, however, there was a hard-working calm in the White House – quite unlike in previous years. Biden’s announcement that his predecessor’s negotiations with the Taliban would follow suit and withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11th at the latest also met with applause.
Joe Biden has never been able to gain much from the mission in far-away Asia, which explains why the US president stubbornly stuck to his decision even when the associated problems became apparent. The main thing is to finally end this endless war, which has devoured an infinite number of dollars and which in the end was either scorned or suppressed by the US citizens. Because 20 years after the terrorist attacks in New York, the country has completely different problems: the corona pandemic is on the rise again despite early vaccination successes, the increasingly noticeable consequences of climate change, the constant bombardment of elementary naturalities such as voter and abortion rights in states like Texas .
For many US presidents, there was a kink in the satisfaction curve after the first eight months. Some have recovered (Bill Clinton), some not (Barack Obama), but they were re-elected anyway. It is not yet clear whether Joe Biden will run again. His will to do so, but that doesn’t mean anything. Especially since he would be 81 years old in the presidential election campaign in 2024 and his condition, especially his mental state, is viewed with concern even by supporters. After the chaos in Kabul, he was accused of poor judgment; Fans and enemies alike saw and heard the most powerful man in the country who was not even able to correctly read the withdrawal declaration from the teleprompter. Will Americans again be willing to overlook this obvious (and perhaps even dangerous) weakness of Biden in 2024?
Biden’s struggle on many fronts
In his 50 years as a professional, the politician Joe Biden was often indecent enough to put his will to the cause aside. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that the implementation of his $ 3.5 trillion infrastructure plan is more important to him than his re-election. The United States has rarely spent more money on (more than urgently needed) investments. Should he get the package through Congress and also succeed, his name and work would be on a par with that of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his major “New Deal” reform. But resistance to the ambitious project comes not only from sections of the republican opposition, but also from within its own ranks. The president has distributed the money wrongly, especially for the party left – but her own husband is too conservative for them anyway. It looks like Joe Biden will continue to fight on many fronts at the same time.
sources: Fivethirtyeight, “”, “”, , Fox News,
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
