Biden’s first term has been stellar. Why does no one seem to see that?

Why does Joe Biden remain so unpopular? That’s what everybody, including the media, seems to be asking day in and day out.

Many younger, liberal people I know, including some of my own students, seem distraught at the prospect of the coming campaign between what they see as two uninspiring candidates.

Of course, they dismiss Donald Trump for what he is — a mortal threat to our democracy and quite likely to be a convicted felon by the time of the actual election.

But they spend more time trying to suppress their yawns at the prospect of a reelected President Biden: So old! So helpless a public speaker! So boring! To which I would add: So what?

What they fail to grasp is that he may well be not only the greatest one-term president in our country’s history but also the most effective chief executive in their lifetimes and, almost, in mine (I was 6 when Franklin Roosevelt died).

Biden has not only overseen the passage of more crucial domestic legislation in his first three years in office than anyone besides Lyndon Johnson and FDR (and they had huge Democratic majorities while Biden had Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin), but he also has been a superb leader and negotiator abroad, reorganizing and revitalizing NATO and leading the fight to help Ukraine survive the worst European war in 80 years.

Just as important, Biden has restored the traditions and values of our own country simply by being — and my friends and students see this, though they undervalue it — a decent human being.

Demanding standards, rooted in the need for excitement, together with a steady stream of distortion and invective from the right, do explain why this fine president has not yet been given his due. Let us hope that by November of next year, and with the votes of those who are disaffected now, he will be.

LESLIE EPSTEIN Brookline

Just as important, he has restored the traditions and values of our own country simply by being a decent human being.

The writer teaches fiction writing at Boston University.