So what did Biden achieve and will it endure? His domestic successes are impressive. He revived a pandemic-stricken economy, created 16m jobs, boosted wages, new businesses and infrastructure spending, reduced the murder rate and curbed illegal immigration. His Inflation Reduction Act slashed healthcare costs and included $400bn to tackle the climate crisis. Stock markets are booming.
Hardly the national “disaster” his successor, Donald Trump, decries. Yet Biden was his own worst enemy. He pooh-poohed the impact on voters of high inflation. In denial about his physical and mental decline, he sought a second term after implying, in 2020, that he would not. He insisted that he could beat Trump, despite his dreadful poll numbers, then grudgingly gave Kamala Harris a hospital pass. Now he is a hiatus in the era of Trump. Trump may very possibly squander the economic gains of the past four years. In foreign policy, too, he could make many problems worse. The difference is that, in international affairs, Biden’s legacy borders on abysmal....
...Biden’s gullibility and excessive caution combined to magnify an arguably even greater calamity after the 7 October 2023 Hamas terrorist atrocities. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s unscrupulous prime minister, repeatedly ran circles round him. Exploiting Biden’s strong pro-Israel loyalties, Netanyahu embarked on what the UN, international courts and human rights organisations fear is a deliberate campaign of extinction against Gaza’s Palestinians.
He repeatedly ignored Biden’s red lines, for example on Rafah and humanitarian aid, while simultaneously benefiting from record deliveries of US weapons. He defiantly extended the war into Lebanon and Syria, and drew US forces into direct confrontation with Iran. Netanyahu and his far-right allies remain the biggest obstacle to the Gaza ceasefire-hostage deal that the White House craves. He took Biden for a fool. Worse, he made the US a party to genocide.
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