President Biden's vowed to "finish the job" in his heavily-produced video announcing his 2024 re-election campaign. However, with a cratering economy, an increasingly dangerous global dynamic and a lack of domestic and foreign policy deliverables, some critics wonder what "job" he is hoping to "finish."
"He thinks he's doing a great job," former Bush White House speechwriter Marc Thiessen said Tuesday on "America Reports," dding that despite being long described as a foreign policy wunderkind, Biden has very little achievements to show for his three years in office.
Thiessen recounted Biden claiming he has brought back American leadership on the world stage and that he inherited a country in diplomatic retreat, countering that former President Trump's accomplishments prove otherwise.
"[W]hat he inherited were four Abraham Accords, the first Middle East peace deals in 25 years -- where's the fifth Abraham Accord? It's not there. He hasn't done it," he said.
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While Trump forged the USMCA replacement trade agreement for the Clinton-era NAFTA, Biden has done little in the way of updating any trade deals with America's two contiguous neighbors.
Biden met Wednesday with South Korean President Yoon Suk Jeol, but Thiessen noted it was Trump who forged a deal with Yoon's predecessor and traveled to Seoul.
"So ‘Mr. Diplomacy’ hasn't gotten a single international agreement signed in his presidency so far, but he's the one who's ‘bringing back American international diplomacy’. Then he says ‘finish the job’," Thiessen continued.
"We have the worst inflation in 40 years, the worst collapse in real wages in four decades, the worst border crisis in American history, worst crime wave since the 1990s, worst labor shortages/worker shortage ever in the history of the United States -- Finish the job? Most people say … I don't want any more crises."
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Biden responded Wednesday to ongoing questions about his age, as he would be 86 years old at the end of his potential second term – eclipsing presidential records held by Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan by a decade or more at that point.
"I notice the polling that I keep hearing about is that I'm between 42 and 46% favorable rating, etc.. And but -- everybody running for re-election in this time has been in the same position -- There's nothing new about that. We're making it sound like ‘Biden is really underwater’," Biden said.
In response Thiessen suggested not every president has had such a low public approval as Biden, saying one must go back to fellow Democrat Harry Truman to find a comparably unpopular president.
A February 1952 Gallup poll scored Truman at 22%. The Missourian, who had assumed office upon the death of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, declined to run for a second full term amid that statistic and his upset loss to then-Sen. Estes Kefauver, D-Tenn., in the 1952 New Hampshire Democratic primary.
The Democratic nomination that year ultimately went to then-Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson II – the namesake son of a former vice president – who lost to Republican World War II Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.
Biden's main chance of winning re-election is if Donald Trump continues to be seen as less popular among swing voters, Thiessen argued.
While a majority disapprove of Biden, he said, they disapprove of Trump more, citing a reported 39% advantage for Biden among voters who dislike both men.
"So they basically they look at [Biden] and say he's a terrible president, but he's the least-worst candidate from their perspective," he said.
