United States | Biden and the Impossible Presidency

It’s been almost a year since Joe Biden won the 2020 election and many seem to regret their choice, according to CNN’s Chris Cillizza, who noted this week that only Donald Trump has been less popular than Biden at this point in a first. presidential term. The Democrat’s approval rating has indeed fallen from 57% to 42% since entering the White House.

Frederick Gagnon
Holder of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair and professor of political science, Université du Québec à Montréal

Biden has certainly struggled (chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, inflation, new waves of COVID-19), but his unpopularity says more about the complexity of the presidential task than his own performance.

The most difficult mission in the world

The titles of recent works by journalist John Dickerson and historian Jeremi Suri aptly sum up how perilous the US presidency has become today: The Hardest Job in the World and The Impossible Presidency. The country’s founders did not want an overly powerful presidency: they allowed Congress to refuse to pass its laws and budgets and the Supreme Court to overturn its decisions.

Two centuries later, this system remains in force, but in a society where one promises to elect superheroes in each presidential election.

So in the 2020 election, Biden spoke about how he would stem one of the worst pandemics in history, the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s, racial tensions unprecedented since the 1960s, climate change from increasingly worrying and the inevitable rise of China. You might as well ask him to empty an ocean with a spoon!

The illusion of having the situation in hand

Like other presidents before him, Biden is therefore grappling with issues over which he has little control. In Dickerson’s book, this is what a former chief of staff to George W. Bush calls “the illusion of having the situation in hand.” This illusion made Lyndon Johnson believe he could win Vietnam, George W. Bush that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would breathe democracy into the Middle East, and Biden that the Taliban would not regain power in Afghanistan so quickly. .

The sharp drop in support for Biden, from 57% to 42% in nine months, shows that Americans are no longer easily convinced that the president can do anything.

The presidential task is all the more perilous as hyperpolarization in the country, which reaches rarely seen heights, leads a growing number of voters to no longer even recognize the legitimacy of the president if he is not from their party.

If we analyze the 42% support for Biden these days, we note that only 4% of Republican voters are satisfied with the president, against 92% of Democrats (according to Gallup). The reverse was observed at the same date in Trump’s term: 8% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans supported him.

The divide was also strong in previous presidencies, but not at this point. Before the events of September 11, 2001 catapulted W. Bush’s popularity to 90% in the country, 27% of Democrats were in favor of him despite his controversial victory in the 2000 election. In November 2009, nearly 20% of Republicans were satisfied with Barack Obama’s performance. Bush Jr. and Obama had ended up losing support among the voters of the opposing party, but Trump and Biden had almost no capital of sympathy with these electorates as soon as they entered the Oval Office.

The best is not yet to come

The president is therefore in a situation of political survival earlier and earlier, sometimes from the start of his mandate. Trump’s inauguration ceremony wasn’t even over as some Congressional Democrats already wanted to impeach him. Presumably, Republican elected officials, many of whom are still repeating the fallacy that Biden became president through major electoral fraud, will launch all kinds of investigations, or even an impeachment process in turn, if they regain control of the government. the House of Representatives and the Senate during the mid-term elections of 2022, a very likely scenario as the Democratic majorities are thin.

We can therefore understand Biden’s eagerness to convince Congress to adopt his plans, including investments of $ 1.2 trillion and $ 3.5 trillion in infrastructure, social services and the fight against climate change.

Those plans, scaled back to appeal to two more conservative Democratic senators, would arguably be Biden’s main legacy, especially if Republican majorities in Congress prevent him from doing anything after the 2022 election. Support of some Republicans in the infrastructure plan shows that collaboration is certainly possible, but the election deadline of 2024 will especially encourage them to oppose Biden, trying to convince the many dissatisfied to hand over the presidency to a Republican . Maybe to Trump.

Closer than you think

The political hypercleavage in the United States and the president’s loss of legitimacy in the eyes of voters on the other side cause political uncertainty rarely seen among our neighbors to the south. The frequent deadlocks in Washington, the inability of the two parties to work together to resolve the country’s problems, the multiple alternations in power during the recent elections and the attempted insurrection on Capitol Hill on January 6 are a sign that the democracy of the main partner of Canada is fragile. The scale of the challenges mentioned in this text also indicates that Biden will not have much time and attention to devote to relations with Canada during this mandate.

For further

• Check out CNN’s Chris Cillizza analysis of Joe Biden’s fall in popularity in the United States
• Read the book The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency, by John Dickerson
• Read the book The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office, by Jeremy Suri
• Read the book United States of America. Political institutions, by Claude Corbo and Frédérick Gagnon, to better understand the relations of the president with the other actors of the American system
• Read the book 2020: America on the brink, by Rafael Jacob, on the scale of the crises hitting the United States in Biden’s time

Watch Chris Cillizza’s analysis on CNN’s website