How can that be?
By every objective measure, Biden has the better record. Trump’s average Gallup approval rating during his tenure was the lowest of any president in the history of modern polling.
The answer to this political puzzle is that Biden spent a year intent on healing the ugly political division created by Trump. Biden’s cure is to be the opposite of Trump — self-effacing, empathic, decent.
Mr. President, it is time to drop the nice guy act. Start bellowing and boasting.
Yes, start acting like Trump.
Skip the lying. And please don’t provoke racial division for political benefit.
But start hammering home your accomplishments.
Remember, candidate Trump said that, with him as president, people would “get tired of winning.”
Well, that proved to be an empty boast. But Biden can back up the big talk.
Let’s review:
The number one issue for voters is the pandemic. How has Biden done?
The statistics are clear: Under Biden, almost 74 percent of adult Americans are fully vaccinated against coronavirus. Almost 87 percent of adults have had at least one dose of the vaccine. And 41 percent of fully vaccinated adults have taken a booster.
The envious Trump likes to take credit for pushing drug companies developing the vaccine. But he had no plan for fast distribution. Less than one percent of the U.S. population was vaccinated when Biden took the oath of office.
Biden’s speed in getting people vaccinated has paid off. The vaccinated have less illness and are far less likely to be hospitalized.
Biden got the vaccine into arms despite efforts by some Republicans in Congress to undercut him. They politicized vaccinations. They demonized people for wearing masks.
They continue to attack public health experts as if it is possible to issue an unchanging set of advice in the middle of a fast-changing storm of disease.
The GOP’s barrage of disinformation, accompanied by right-wing, quack conspiracy theories, has added to public fatigue after two years of dealing with the virus. People of every political type are tired and grumpy. And that was before the omicron variant caused another surge in infections.
That’s why it is important for Biden to say loudly that America is beating COVID. He has the evidence. He can point out that there is no second lockdown.
His steady hand in dealing with a once-in-a generation threat to public health has schools open again. And he kept the American economy as the best in the world.
Let’s talk more about the economy.
The economy is booming in ways that Trump could have only dreamed about achieving.
When the final data is in, the nation’s gross domestic product in 2021 is expected to have seen the biggest one-year jump since 1984. If such a thing had happened under Trump, he would have been touting himself as the greatest economic president in history.
The December unemployment rate was 3.9 percent. It was 6.7 percent in December of 2020. In Biden’s first year, the U.S. economy added more than six million jobs.
Also, the stock market is booming, up 25 percent in Biden’s first year — the Dow Jones, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 all reached record highs.
To keep the economy from stumbling due to the pandemic shutdown, Biden and congressional Democrats, with no GOP support, passed the American Rescue Plan. The $1.9 trillion plan put stimulus checks of $1,400 directly into the bank accounts of Americans in need.
Millions also benefited from the law’s extension of unemployment benefits and rental assistance.
And the bill provided a child tax credit that cut childhood poverty by about half, according to researchers at Columbia University.
Oh, and please send up fireworks for the bipartisan infrastructure law Biden signed that invests over $1 trillion in repairing and rebuilding America’s ailing infrastructure — the roads, bridges, and ports.
The next big win is huge.
Biden ended the longest war in American history.
Americans wanted out for years. But three presidents feared the fallout from ending the troubled war in Afghanistan.
Biden showed courage by ending a 20-year war that left more than 2,400 American troops dead.
Yes, some service members lost their lives during the evacuation. But how many more would have died if the U.S. stayed in a war without end?
And Biden is standing up to Russian President Vladimir Putin
As UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson
In his successful 1980 presidential campaign against Carter, GOP nominee Ronald Reagan asked voters “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
In the 1984 campaign, Reagan as president advertised his time in office as “Morning in America.” That’s a President who knew how to promote himself.
Reagan won with that swagger.
And he didn’t have first term accomplishments anywhere close to Biden’s first year.
Biden needs to remind voters of all that he has done, beginning now.
Modesty could well lead to the fifth year of the Trump presidency.
Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.
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