Why it's hard to explain Joe Biden's unpopularity
Joe Biden is one of the most unpopular presidents in modern American history. In Gallup polling, his approval ratings are lower than those of any president embarking on a reelection campaign, from Dwight Eisenhower to Donald Trump.
Yet an air of mystery hangs around his lousy polling numbers. As The Washington Free Beacon's Joe Simonson noted recently, just surfing around most U.S. media and pop culture, you probably wouldn't realize that Biden's job approval ratings are quite so historically terrible, worse by far than Trump's at the same point in his first term.
Apart from anxiety about his age, there isn't a chattering-class consensus or common shorthand for why his presidency is such a political flop. Which is why, perhaps, there was a rush to declare his State of the Union address a rip-roaring success, as though all Biden needs to do to right things is to talk loudly through more than an hour of prepared remarks.
When things went south for other recent chief executives, there was usually a clearer theory of what was happening. Trump's unpopularity was understood to reflect his chaos and craziness and authoritarian forays. The story of George W. Bush's descending polls was all about Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. When Barack Obama was at his polling nadir, most observers blamed the unemployment rate and the Obamacare backlash, and when Bill Clinton struggled through his first two years, there was a clear media narrative about his lack of discipline and
