Former teacher assess the 46th President’s accomplishments
December 2024
Editor’s Note: Fifteen months into Joe Biden’s presidency, in April 2022, writer Tim Munkeby evaluated his presidency. With less than a month remaining of Biden’s four-year term, and after his decision to not run again, Munkeby gives his final assessment of the 46th President of the United States.
BY TIM MUNKEBY
Although I’ve evaluated Biden before, and also assessed the Donald Trump presidency as he left office in January 2021, I hesitated to provide yet another report card this time around. (I say report card because I was a junior and senior high school teacher for more than a decade.)
As we all know, the debate between Biden and Trump last June, in which Biden didn’t appear to be well and faltered, proved to be lethal to his candidacy and he was ultimately convinced to end his bid for a second term. Evaluating Biden’s presidency now means looking at it with a sense that it was cut short, seeing as he won’t have four more years to follow through on all of his original promises.
In general, I believe Biden to be a statesman—an “elder” statesman now—who, like former President Barack Obama, has his heart in the right place. He has governed the country to the best of his ability, and has had the country’s best interests in mind.
The main criteria I’m using are:
1) Our Safety (safety of the country but also, selfishly, of my family—currently five children, four in-laws, and a dozen grandchildren)
2) Our Earth (or the environment)
3) Our Economy (or financial security)
4) Our Education (In this new era, I believe it’s the most significant as all others depend on it.)
So here goes:
OUR SAFETY
My priority in life, as I said, is the safety of my family. So this gets personal. We (including you, the readers of this piece, and our country as well) are simply not safe with a confused, petulant child and a psychopathic narcissist as a leader. Fortunately, Biden has been neither.
Biden has kept our global alliances, like NATO, intact, and he hasn’t caused a planet-ending war—since he’s not an irrational hothead.
When Biden took office, he didn’t deny we had a pandemic that caused the deaths of thousands, nor did he make insane proclamations to the country—like suggesting research into whether Covid might be treated by injecting disinfectant into our bodies.
He guided Congress to pass numerous bills to keep us safe and successfully get us out from under the dregs of the pandemic. He was as cautious as possible with masking, quarantine rules and vaccine recommendations, all in an attempt to keep us safe.
Sure, you can make an argument that it all wasn’t necessary. We’ll never know, but again, the intent was to keep us safe.
Even though Republicans love the chicken-shit, fear-based strategy of blame and obstruction, Biden pushed through at least parts of his Build Back Better and Infrastructure bills, all intended to help—especially the middle and lower classes—survive the financial fallout from the pandemic.
Biden, although awkwardly, also got us out of the never-ending war in Afghanistan.
There are too many examples to list here of all the things Biden, who’s respected around the world (as opposed to Trump), has done to keep us safe from harm—harm that many of us might feel distanced from.
So, I’ll point to just one: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Protecting democracy is tantamount to protecting our safety and freedom. We must support democracy by supporting Ukraine, and Biden has done so at every turn.
We know Trump will not. It’s obvious I’d say, by his own words (except, ironically, his words are usually lies and therefore worthless), that he desires to be a dictator— not the leader of the greatest democracy on earth.
In April 2022, I gave Biden a B+ for Effort and a C+ for Performance.
Today, I think he’s improved.
Biden’s Grades on Safety:
Effort: A
Performance: B+
OUR EARTH
I try to live my life optimistically. But I have to admit I don’t share this optimism regarding climate control and the damage we’re doing to—not only the planet—but to our future Earthlings. In fact, I often feel helpless, and that any effort is futile.
Biden has talked the talk but doesn’t always walk the walk—not that he’s been able to do anything really effective alone. We need the world behind this, not a few single leaders. Where’s the United Nations when we need them? Thus the futility.
But Biden definitely showed us he has a vision for the future of our planet and the future of our grandchildren. He rejoined the Paris Agreement that Trump separated us from, worked to protect habitats, limited destruction of our environment by irresponsible drilling and mining, improved the quality of our air and water (which may well become the most consequential environmental concern of the future), and reduced carbon emissions.
Let’s just say Biden had our future in mind, rather than how much money he could make raping our planet.
In April 2022, I gave Biden an A for Effort and a D for Performance.
Today, I slightly downgrade his Effort grade, but increase his Performance mark.
Biden’s Grades on the Environment:
Effort: A-
Performance: B
OUR ECONOMY (or Financial Security)
This one blows my mind: the difference between perception and data (reality) is almost unbelievable. You’d think, listening to the Republican Party and MAGA heads (one of the ‘A’s in MAGA must stand for “absurdity”), that we’re all living jobless, in the streets (when unemployment has actually been at all-time lows), and that inflation is out of control, higher than it’s ever been.
Inflation has now fallen to around 3 percent. Wages are now rising at a rate that more than compensates for inflation. Many people have experienced double-digit inflation in their lifetimes—and it hasn’t been under Biden. Inflation was also high under Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan and H.W. Bush. Thanks to the efforts of the Clinton and Obama administrations it was low during their tenures, which helped Trump—until his catastrophic Covid response decimated the economy.
But who gives a crap about facts or reality? Thomas Jefferson told us back in the day, well before our current age of misinformation: “A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate.” Too many Republicans today base their decisions on “alternative facts,” while sipping their Trump Kool-Aid cocktail.
As I stated above, President Biden pulled us, quite admirably, out of the Covid mire—the epidemic Trump denied existed, ignored, and then made exponentially worse.
Today, my kids are employed, and my friends have retired quite successfully. This is also currently true for much of the country. My investments have performed remarkably well and the S&P is at or near all-time highs.
Maybe the disillusioned MAGA people have spent all their money traipsing around to Trump rallies or sending cash to poor ol’ convicted felon Donald.
Unfortunately, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Democrats failed to do a good job reaching and informing enough people to help them understand the truth—that the economy is not in ruin. It’s much the opposite, due to the MANY bills passed during the Biden administration.
No, the United States is not falling apart or in decline. But sadly, not enough people chose to believe this truth in November. Instead, a majority clung to the false, negative rhetoric of Republican lies.
In April 2022, I gave Biden a B+ for Effort and a B for Performance.
Today, I think he’s improved those marks since then.
Biden’s Grades on the Economy:
Effort: A-
Performance: A-
OUR EDUCATION
This, or the deterioration and lack of education, is the largest hurdle to an informed electorate and a healthy democracy. It’s the greatest threat to a non-divisive, non-violent, functioning society. I don’t believe this is hyperbole.
One of my favorite analogies is by Desmond Tutu: “We have to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” It’s more expensive to constantly pull people out of the river than preventing them from falling in.
And we’ve got to realize this!
What do I mean by “falling in”? Well, taking a look at education in my home state of Minnesota, as many as 500,000 K-12 students here don’t read proficiently. In the U.S., more than 50 percent of kids read below their grade level.
If kids don’t read well, it affects their self-esteem, erodes their confidence, triggers shame, and limits their potential to develop into the best version of themselves and become good citizens.
Could this be a primary factor contributing to the deterioration of students’ behavior that we hear so much about in public schools today? Could it be why, according to Minnesota Department of Education data, more than 30 percent of kids were chronically absent during the 2021-2022 school year? This was exacerbated by the pandemic, but recovery has been slow or even in decline.
The U.S. Justice Department tells us: “The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence and crime is wedded to reading failure.” The statistics show about 85 percent of youths in the criminal justice system are functionally illiterate, while nearly 70 percent of incarcerated people read below the fourth grade level.
While Trump took support away from improving the education of our children, Biden has improved funding. The administration’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) set aside nearly $170 billion for public schools—the single largest-ever investment in education. Districts around the country used the funds for everything from summer and afterschool programs to increases in educator pay.
In 2021, reading proficiency among fourth graders in St. Paul, for example, improved after the district spent millions in ARP funds on a literacy program, and provided training to teachers in science-backed reading strategies. According to assessments, the 4,000 students in the program learned to read more quickly than their peers not enrolled in the program.
This past September, the Biden administration awarded another $149 million to support states in implementing evidence-based reading interventions, including efforts to ensure every child is reading fluently by third grade.
In April 2022, I gave Biden an A for Effort and a D for Performance.
I think his performance since then merits a mixed review.
Biden’s Grades on Education:
Effort: B+
Performance: C
OVERALL GRADE IN OFFICE
In spite of my being a little tough in some instances on this report card, I believe what Biden has done for our country coming out of Covid and the economic downturn will reward his presidency as being one of historical success and importance.
Biden has always had his heart in the right place, and he’s done everything he could to help the people of the United States survive financially, especially after a pandemic that was killing 3,000 Americans a day when he took office.
Some analysts have said Biden’s stimulus programs contributed to persistent inflation by injecting too much money into the U.S. economy, but I say his efforts helped us sidestep a recession when the economy was largely shut down.
Furthermore, the true benefits of Biden’s presidency won’t be realized for years, when the projects funded by his infrastructure package, microchip law and other programs have fully come to fruition.
Earlier this month, he said this about his economic legacy: “Some of my friends in the Republican Party…they’re against all the things we did. Keep your eye on them. Tell me when they want the programs we voted for to be cut in their states. Show me the most conservative Republicans willing to take away the factories that are going to be built in their states. Going to be interesting.”
Biden leaves office with low approval ratings but I have no doubt that he’ll ultimately follow in the path of presidents like Truman, Carter and the first Bush, who are viewed far more favorably decades later than they were upon leaving office.
For some, Biden has gone from “the man who saved the country from Trump” to “the man who enabled Trump’s return.” Yet much like Obama did when Trump took office the first time, Biden is leaving him one of the strongest economies in modern history.
Now, we wait to see how long it takes Trump to undermine the prosperity, like he did his first time around.
In April 2022, I gave Biden an A for Effort and a C for Performance.
Since then I believe he’s maintained his impressive effort to help Americans and he leaves office with improved marks.
Biden’s Overall Grade in Office:
Effort: A
Performance: B
Tim Munkeby is a member of The Reporters Inc’s Advisory Committee, a former teacher, financial advisor, author of four books, and co-creator of Minnesota’s Rally to Read. You can contact him via his website, www.timmunkeby.com.
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