This week marks Biden’s first 100 days in office. An arbitrary measure as it only represents 7 percent of a presidential term. Its roots go back to FDR, but the 100-day construct has been fueled by journalists and the 24/7 news cycle looking for a barometer to take pulse of a new administration.
Biden’s campaign promise was to unify the country and rule via bipartisanship. Instead, he has ruled by executive fiat. He issued 40 executive orders, the most of any recent president in this amount of time, and of those EOs, 19 revoked prior orders. Providing air cover for packing the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, and adding DC statehood is tyranny of the majority. Biden’s other actions do not bode well for the future. His inaugural action included rejoining the Paris Climate accord. That, along with his “green” infrastructure bill, is the ominous foreshadowing of higher energy costs. Low income Americans will be hit the hardest. He is re-opening up talks with Iran, putting in jeopardy Trump’s successful Middle East peace accords. He is getting pushed around and is being tested by Russia and China. He is proposing higher taxes just as the economy is getting ready to recover. Biden has further deteriorated race relations with his divisive rhetoric, support of critical race theory, and cancelling of Trump’s 1776 project. And while Joe campaigned as a center-Left, moderate candidate, he received his greatest accolades from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who praised Joe’s first 100 days as having “exceeded progressive expectations.”
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There have been three salient actions by Biden in the first 100 days: a war on energy, open borders, and a Covid-19 stimulus bill. He cancelled the Keystone pipeline costing tens of thousands of jobs and halted new leases on oil and gas drilling. Average gas prices at the pump are $2.88, up 20 percent from $2.38 in January. There are 23,000 unaccompanied minors held at the border in US custody as illegal border crossings hit a 20-year high. Biden signed the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill with less than 10 percent of the bill directly linked to Covid relief while $1 trillion of the previously authorized $4 trillion Covid relief goes unspent.
The pre-Covid national unemployment rate in January 2020 was 3.6 percent. The unemployment rate fell to 6.3 percent in January 2021, down from its peak of 14.7 percent in 2020. The current rate stands at 6.0 percent. Stock prices closed out 2020 by notching all-time highs on the very last day of the year. The benchmark S&P 500 index finished the year up 16.3 percent while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index gained nearly 44 percent. The S&P 500 is up 10 percent since Biden took office due in part to continued government stimulus and the vaccine rollout.
We have been taught to look with a skeptical eye on polling numbers given their across-the-board failure leading up to the 2020 elections. However, presidential approval ratings give us longitudinal benchmarks. The Sunday NBC poll had Biden with a 53 percent job approval. The 100-day presidential job approval from Truman to Biden averaged 66 percent. Having only beaten Ford and Trump, Biden effectively received a lukewarm reaction. Trump was at 45 percent.
Big media (propaganda) is clearly a contributing factor to propping up Biden's lackluster performance. Biden enjoyed 56 percent positive press coverage with 726 minutes of airtime while Trump was slammed with 89 percent negative press coverage and 1900 minutes of airtime. Peeling back the onion on the polls showed that Biden scored his highest marks on handling the coronavirus (69 percent) but lowest on the border security and administration (disapprove 59 percent). In other words, Biden rode the coattails of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed and, in the one area where Biden did the exact opposite of Trump, he had his worst results.
During Trump’s first 100 days, he nominated and successfully confirmed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, approved the Keystone XL pipeline and began to dismantle Obama era climate rules positioning Trump to eventually achieve US energy independence, which hadn’t been accomplished since 1957. He also kept a campaign promise and expanded border enforcement which ultimately led to the lowest border crossings in 50 years by early 2019. At the onset, Trump had to deal with the fake Russian collusion hoax that plagued his presidency.
The 2022 elections will be the first accurate “poll” on whether or not Americans approve of the “new” Joe Biden. The president is going to need to do a lot more than allow us to picnic with friends and family on the 4th of July if he wants to avoid a routing in 2022.
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