The 'Biden is the best US president in my lifetime thread' thread

Today the Biden Administration:

Extended overtime protections to 4 million salaried workers so they can't be worked 80 hours a week without compensation.

Banned non-compete clauses in work contracts, giving workers more freedom than ever to pursue jobs worth their talents.

Gave a speech touting the need for Green Energy in Prince William Forest Park in VA, lauding the $156 million in funding for initiatives for VA alone.

Conducted diplomacy with President Xi of China in an afternoon phone call, including explaining to Xi the new TikTok divestment bill that he signed from Congress.

And, oh yeah, signed the package that his administration lobbied for to provide aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan despite the traitor caucus in the GOP. A major blow to Putin and a warning to Xi.

NO!

BIDEN COMMIE TRUMP MAKE AMERICA GREAT!!

YOU LIKE BIDEN YOU NO AMERICAN!

Keep trying, we know you were not born yesterday. You are just stupid and ill informed.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes

There are so many criteria on which one could rate the "greatness" of a president - leadership intangibles, ethical standards, oratorical skill, political savvy, economic success of the nation, crisis management, international affairs -- that it would be hard for me to see how to rank people other than broad categories like exceptional, great, good, average, subpar, bad.

I think the fact that Biden has been as successful as he has been given what he has to work with and what he faces (a Republican party who reflexively opposes everything he does, the aftermath of a global pandemic, no great stock of rhetorical skill, his old age) is pretty impressive. Would I say it puts him above LBJ, Obama, Reagan or Clinton? I tend to say not yet.

This may be splitting hairs but I think that if we look at the presidency v president it can be helpful.

One of the things Biden did that has paid huge downstream dividends was appointing Warren staffers and acolytes to administrative and regulatory positions and just look at yesterday’s FTC decision that non competes are illegal. The NLRB has found enough spine that Thomas’s patrons have decided it must be destroyed so now SCOTUS is considering if labor law is constitutional. The FDA recommended rescheduling marijuana and reports are that the DEA is gonna sign off on it shortly. Even after SCOTUS blocked his original student debt forgiveness they’ve worked enough loopholes to forgive the debt of 7.8 million Americans. Etc, etc.

Combined with the legislative wins it is pretty impressive.

*me continuing to scream into the void* IT WAS FLAVOR AID! FLAVOR AID!

I mean you're an absolute miserable cunt if you can't get behind this after years and years of US commercial carriers just fucking over people on the regular:

https://qz.com/airlines-biden-dot-rules-junk-fees-cash-refunds-1851431531

That muffled whimper you hear is @Steal Your Face cursing himself and punching his own nuts for being so partisan even he can't recognize this as a good thing

Wait. What?

If you purchase a service and then it isn’t delivered they have to give you your money back?

What kinda commie bullshit is that?!?!

Here's a list of Biden administration accomplishments in the last two weeks:

• Secures Aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan
  
  
• Forces TikTok to sell off it's Chinese interests or be banned
  
  
• Requires to refund passengers for canceled and significantly delayed flights
  
  
• Standards set to eliminate emissions from new federal buildings by 2030
  
  
• Grants overtime pay to 4 million US workers
  
  
• Adds Title IX protections for LGBTQ students and assault victims
  
  
• Unveils $7 billion for rooftop solar
  
  
• Limits oil drilling across 13 million acres of Alaskan Arctic
  
  
• Launches emergency response protocol for mass shootings
  
  
• Takes significant steps to strengthen the U.S. steel and aluminum industries
  
  
• Announces nominations for two individuals for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and one individual for U.S. Marshal
  
  
• Forgives $7.4 billion more in student loan debt
  
  
• Grants clemency to 16 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses
  
  
• Announces plans to tee up offshore wind across the nation’s coastlines
  
  
• Makes $11 Billion Push to Beat China at Chip Research
  
  
• Enacts rules to strengthen privacy protections for Reproductive Health Care
  
  
• Requires nursing homes to comply with minimum staffing levels
  
  
• Enacts $8.8 Billion Home Energy Rebate Programs to Lower Utility Bills
  
  
• Makes agreement with Japan to strengthen defense ties amid tensions with China
  

@Steal Your Face, could you go through each of these bullet points and say whether it was a good or bad idea, and if a bad idea, what the Biden administration should have done in its place?

Yeah, but "Kool-Aid" becomes "Kill-Aid" so easily. How can you expect headline writers of the 70's to pass up the pun?

I'd disagree about Reagan being on that list, imo. But that's just me.

It depends, again, as to how one defines "great."

I am no fan of Reagan and would say many of his choices often ranged from at best short-sighted and at worst disastrous (supply-side economics, Iran-Contra, his possible/probable conspiracy to keep the hostages in Iran, his response to AIDS, his elevation of Rehnquist and appointment of Scalia...one could go on).

All that said, I think reasonable people need to concede that between his charisma, electoral success, pop culture footprint/popularity and his ability to enact policy (however problematic), he was extraordinary, and great in that sense, not in the "positive for the country" sense.

I can answer for him. They're all bad ideas, and the Biden administration should resign and allow a true leader like Donald Trump to lead this great nation.

Now that I think about it, Biden probably is the best president of my lifetime.

Although, considering I was born during the Reagan administration, that's not exactly a high bar.

Reagan: People though he was awesome at the time, but, we've learned some things.

Bush: The very definition of a lukewarm turd sandwich.

Clinton: Got into a lot of shenanigans, but at least he did his job while he was at it.

Bush II: Fool me once, shame on... shame on... you. Fool me twice... can't get fooled again!

Obama: Either the best or worst president ever, if one has strong opinions about black presidents. After controlling for racial bias, works out to kind of meh, maybe even "he was good, I guess?"

Trump:

Biden: People wanted "not Trump," and he delivered. Then he actually started doing shit. Nobody saw that coming.

This is all true. is there some cognitive dissonace I'm not hearing (from you)??

With all due respect go fuck yourself, unless that was sarcasm.

Ugh. I am seriously not making a comparison here and it sucks that it is where my mind goes when I hear people discussing ‘great’ but it is what it is.

When I read @Bickendan’s post my first thought was a uh… conversation or maybe a turd dropping that happened 20 years ago on a bank of the Neckar.

When I was going to school in Heidelberg my very close friend (an actual German who was an exchange student while we were in high school) was at university in Mannheim. It was only 20 minutes on the S-Bahn and trains came every half an hour until 1 am so I was up there a lot.

One weekend day we were ‘BBQing’ (we were not we were grilling but no one outside the south seems to understand what the fuck BBQ is [INDIRECT HEAT!] so whatever) on the Neckar which is what folks do when one of Vera’s fellow economics compatriots just up and asked why there weren’t any statues of Hitler anywhere.

Total record scratch moment. All the Germans fought to respond about how bad Hitler was but after just a bit he interrupted with something along the lines of (again this was 20 years ago and even then my German wasn’t fluent): “Yes, yes, yes. I get he was very very bad. But he was great. He was an important leader and conquered many nations. Mao was an asshole and also killed millions but we still have statues of him. So why don’t you have statues of Hitler?”

Anyway. Yeah. ‘Greatness’ is a subjective term.

It was from watching "Time Team" that I first noticed that the British separate the terms "Good" and "Great". It's an important distinction. Being "good" does not make one "great" and vice-versa. Very few people are both. Harry S Truman might be one, but I can't think of many others off hand.

GODWIN, BITCH!

IT’S NOT MY FAULT! THE CHINAMAN MADE THE COMPARISON!

John Lennon, I am the Walrus.

While I was technically born during the Carter administration, there were only a few months left in it, so I'll count "the presidents in my lifetime" as starting with Reagan.

Reagan was the most consequential. The problem is, he was consequential at doing harm. Lots and lots of it, lasting far beyond the end of his administration. To call someone the "best," I want them to actually have done something good.

The greatest single policy achievement, in terms of making a positive difference in Americans' lives, belongs to Obama. Flawed though it may have been, the ACA is still the biggest improvement since Medicare. He also signed Dodd-Frank and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

On the other hand, Biden's way less flashy, but he's enacted a lot of smaller, but nonetheless consequential, positive changes.

And then:

Do we evaluate strictly based on accomplishments, or do we look at the headwinds they faced? All of Obama's major accomplishments happened in his first two years, when he had solid majorities in the House and Senate.

Do we take ambition into account? Obama played it safe, much more than Biden. On the other hand, maybe that comes back to headwinds. Maybe Obama had to play it safe, while Biden, as a white man, can go further out on a limb without facing the same penalties Obama would have faced for going out that far.

And, heck, is this selling Clinton short? He gave in to reactionary agendas in a lot of ways, but you could argue that everyone needs to be judged against the context of their time, and Clinton had to deal with the immediate aftermath of Reagan and the greed-is-good '80s. 1990s Biden wasn't that different from Clinton. Stick Biden in the White House from 1993 to 2001 and Bill Clinton now, and would things be that different?

Someone got it. Also:

SHUT THE FUCK UP DONNY!

Agree with Anc (and expanding?) that the only way to do something like this is sort of bracket style, and if you took all the presidents in my lifetime (not counting JFK living for less than 40 days while I was alive) then I'd say it's fair to say it's down to him or LBJ.

And he's probably #2 just because CRA and VRA are such massive accomplishments.

That said, there are remarkable parallels because in the same sense that LBJ's most stubborn failure was a foreign war, Biden seems to have not learned from that mistake.

So, I count Joe as basically a failure re Israel. He probably has some marginal wins around the edges that aren't apparent to us yet, but Bibi's government CAN'T be radical maniacs as they are now if we tell them "you get nothing until you come to heel" and that, cynically, probably involves giving them SOME leash to prove how insane they are....but that leash has been hella too long.

That aside, choosing Garland turns out to have been a massive mistake. Opinions will vary how much grace you give Biden for not having seen this mess coming.

Third, SOME of his executive actions - like the Title IX order this week - have taken too long, some are incomplete - like the HIPPA rule about out-of-state abortions, which SHOULD have a parallel for GAC, and some remain undone (how TF does Louis DeJoy still have a job? So like every president, it's always possible to say "could have done this better"

All that said, by every other measure he has accomplished more against slimer odds than anyone would have had any right to expect 4 years ago. I wrote then that Biden, at best, would be a caretaker president to hopefully bridge us out of the Crazy Years and whether we could afford to settle for that.

But he has been MUCH more than a caretaker and Gaza aside, he's NOT the lesser of two evils unless you proceed from the view that EVERY candidate for the office is evil by default.

I would say that the headwinds need to be a factor. But those too are hard to evaluate.

Obama had a love-in with the mainstream press that quite possibly is unrivaled. The first Black president cut for him in a lot of ways. But it also generated a lot of hate. Remember the now-quaint scandals that got hyped up by the right-wing press, many of which crossed over to the mainstream press? His "terrorist fist bump"? His wearing a tan suit? His being named "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" or there being the bad-faith questions about whether he was a U.S. citizen?

The shiznit a person with Bill Clinton's savvy and charisma might accomplish in a post-Trump era is mind-boggling.

Think of the scandals that got hyped up re: Clinton. Bullshit like Whitewater, him fucking Monica and lying about it, a couple rape allegations. (At least, though, these were actual ethical and criminal violations alleged, and had at least a possibility of validity as opposed to the BS raised against Obama). The coverage of these things by the so-called liberal media was breathless and nonstop.

Trump has essentially admitted to having committed repeated crimes and/or there's pretty ironclad proof of it, along with more garden-variety corruption. And yet half the country's voters are still apparently willing to side with him.

Particularly when he could employ tools that were not available back then like Twitter and other social media, and if he were willing to take a page from Trump's book and not even bother to seek bipartisan solutions.

One of the things I love about this presidency is how often he gets Republicans to shout the stock market is not the economy!!

I’d Trump were president it’d be infrastructure week.