The 10 best and worst things Biden did in 2022
This week, I offer my annual lists of the 10 best and 10 worst things the president did this year. Since President Joe Biden gives me so much to criticize, we’ll start with the best things:
The 10 best things this year 10. He acted to prevent a crippling national rail strike.
It wasn’t exactly Ronald Reagan firing striking air traffic controllers, but Biden did get Congress to pass bipartisan legislation forcing rail worker unions to accept the overly generous contract his administration had negotiated, avoiding a strike that could have crippled our economy and exacerbated inflation.
9. He is sending B-52s to Australia to counter China.
Building on last year’s historic trilateral security agreement with Australia and Britain — known as AUKUS — to help Canberra build nuclear-capable submarines, Biden announced plans to deploy up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to a dedicated air base in northern Australia to help counter Chinese hegemony.
8. He launched a “fullcourt press” against China’s domestic semiconductor industry.
Biden blocked U.S. companies from selling chips or semiconductor equipment to China. He also cracked down on China’s “Thousand Talents” program to recruit U.S. science and technology experts, issuing export control rules that prohibit U.S. citizens from supporting China’s advanced chip development — cutting off the flow of Silicon Valley expertise. This will severely curtail China’s ambitions to develop its own cutting-edge semiconductor industry.
7. He signed the first bipartisan gun legislation in decades.
Following the school shooting in Uvalde, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, co-sponsored by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., that protects the rights of lawful gun owners while cracking down on criminal misuse of firearms — including incentives for states to implement “red-flag” laws; increased funding for mental health and school safety; added scrutiny of gun buyers who are under 21 or domestic abusers; and stronger penalties for straw buyers and gun traffickers.
6. He secured extradition of the terrorist charged with bombing Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 190 Americans.
Libyan intelligence operative Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud — suspected of building the explosive device used in the 1988 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, is the first terrorist linked to the attack to face justice in the United States.
5. He kept Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations.
President Donald Trump listed the IRGC in 2019 as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign after he withdrew from President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal. Iran demanded that Biden delist the IRGC before it considered returning to compliance with the deal. Despite his misguided efforts to revive that agreement, Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in April that the IRGC would remain on the list and that the decision was “absolutely final.”
4. He won support for Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
While he must still manage Turkish intransigence, Biden got both NATO allies and a 95-1 bipartisan majority in the Senate to support the admission of the two Nordic nations to the Atlantic alliance — a major blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who opposes any NATO expansion.
3. He killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Of course, Zawahiri was living openly in downtown Kabul thanks to Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. But 11 years after opposing the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, Biden ordered the drone strike that took out bin Laden’s righthand man and successor. He also took out Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in northwest Syria and resumed full ground operations alongside our Kurdish partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, which have kept a check on the Islamic State in the region.
2. He declared the United States will defend Taiwan.
Not once, not twice, but four times since taking office (most recently in September), Biden has vowed that the U.S. military would defend Taiwan if Communist China attacked. Beijing is on notice: The policy of “strategic ambiguity” is dead (notwithstanding White House aides who tried to walk back Biden’s comments each time). It is U.S. policy to defend Taiwan against unjust aggression. Biden’s handling of Ukraine tops both my best and worst lists this year. Here is the best: After Russia invaded, Biden rallied our allies to support Ukraine’s self-defense — providing arms, money, intelligence and diplomatic support that stopped Putin from seizing Kyiv. At the start of the conflict, no one thought Ukraine could survive; today, Ukraine’s courageous armed forces are on the offensive, retaking territory Russia unlawfully seized. For all the flaws in his Ukraine strategy, Biden deserves credit for saving a free and independent Ukraine.
One accomplishment that does not make a compilation of the good things Biden did but deserves grudging admiration nonetheless: Despite presiding over the worst inflation in 40 years, the worst collapse in real wages in four decades, the highest gas prices on record, the worst crime wave since the 1990s and the worst border crisis in U.S. history, Biden
1. He saved Ukraine.
turned in the best first midterm performance of any president since John F. Kennedy (except for George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks). That is an impressive achievement.
The 10 worst things this year
The worst presidency in my lifetime got worse in 2022. Here, I offer my list of the 10 worst things Biden did this year.
10. He presided over a plethora of disasters.
On Biden’s watch this year, our country experienced the worst inflation in 40 years, the largest decline in real wages in four decades, the highest gas prices ever recorded in the United States, the biggest annual rise in food prices since 1979, crisislevel labor shortages and the worst crime wave in many cities since the 1990s. Not since Jimmy Carter has a president unleashed so many calamities at once.
9. He called Georgia’s election law “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Despite Biden’s ugly and false claim, early voting shattered Georgia’s record for midterm elections, with Black voters accounting for 29 percent of early voters. And in the U.S. Senate runoff, Black voters cast 27 percent of the votes, five points less than in the January 2021 runoff. Biden owes Georgia an apology.
8. He and his party urged Republicans to reject extremists while promoting them in GOP primaries.
Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars supporting MAGA candidates in GOP primaries, hoping they would be easier to defeat — one of the most cynical, immoral political strategies in memory.
7. His administration discharged thousands of troops for refusing COVID-19 vaccination.
The Army fell short of its recruitment goals by 25 percent, or 15,000 soldiers this year, and Pentagon officials warned of the worst military recruitment crisis since the inception of the volunteer service. Yet more than 3,000 experienced, battle-hardened troops were needlessly forced out.
6. He begged foreign despots to produce more oil while weakening domestic production.
Biden lifted sanctions and allowed Chevron to produce and export Venezuelan oil again, and he begged OPEC to produce more, all while leasing fewer acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling than any president since the end of World War II.
5. In an unconstitutional power grab, he canceled up to $1 trillion in student loans.
His order — hung up in the courts — would force bluecollar workers to subsidize the higher education of white-collar professionals by using a 9/11-era law intended to help service
members called up to active duty avoid default.
4. He has failed to avenge the Kabul airport bombing that killed 183 people, including 13 Americans.
Biden warned those who carried out the 2021 attack: “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” But since the U.S. withdrawal more than a year ago, there have been no “over the horizon” strikes against the ISIS-K terrorists responsible.
3. He signed into law an Inflation Reduction Act that will not reduce inflation or climate change.
This massive climate spending bill’s impact on inflation will be statistically indistinguishable from zero, and it will reduce the rise in global temperature by 0.0009 degrees — next to nothing.
2. He made the worst border crisis in U.S. history even worse.
In fiscal 2022, there were almost 2.4 million encounters at the southern border, plus more than 600,000 known “gotaways” and 98 people on the terrorist watch list were stopped near the border. More than 800 migrants died crossing the border illegally. Yet when asked why he had not visited the border, Biden said he had “more important things going on.”
1. He slow-rolled military aid to Ukraine out of fear of provoking Putin.
He refused Ukraine’s requests for Stinger and Javelin missiles for months before Russia invaded. After Moscow attacked, he offered to help President Volodymyr Zelenskyy escape — to which the Ukrainian leader reportedly replied, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” Then Biden forced Ukraine to defend itself for months primarily with antiquated Soviet-era weaponry — and blocked Poland from transferring Soviet-designed MiG-29 jets to Kyiv, terrified that stronger U.S. support could cause “World War III.” (This prompted Zelenskyy to ask “What is NATO doing? Is it being run by Russia?”) Biden waited more than nine months to give Ukraine just one Patriot airdefense system, allowing Putin to destroy schools, homes, hospitals and critical infrastructure. When he finally did deliver the game-changing
High Mobility Artillery Rocket
Systems, they had been secretly modified so they couldn’t fire long-range rockets. And Biden still refuses to give Ukraine longer-range Army Tactical Missile System missiles because they could (theoretically) reach Russia or M1 Abrams tanks. As a Ukrainian reporter asked Biden at his news conference with Zelenskyy: “Can we make long story short and give Ukraine all capabilities it needs and liberate all territories rather sooner than later?” Zelenskyy added: “I agree.” Biden’s refusal to do so is dragging out the conflict, leading to thousands of civilian deaths and delaying Putin’s defeat.
Limiting this list to 10 was extremely difficult, so here are a few dishonorable mentions: Biden engaged in weak public hand-wringing at a Democratic fundraiser about his fears Putin might start a nuclear war. He fecklessly depleted the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gas prices before the midterm elections. He did not deliver on his promised support for Afghan women or for women rising up in Iran. And after promising to put his “whole soul” into uniting the country, he compared Republicans to racists, segregationists and traitors.
Biden’s second year was even more divisive and incompetent than his first. I shudder to think what Year 3 will bring.