Biden quits: The worst president in U.S. history?

Joe Biden announced Sunday that he is dropping out of the presidential race. It was a matter of time. His candidacy, with the media and party elites against him, was unfeasible. The only thing that prevented him from doing so was his stubbornness, or that of his family. But in the end, the pressure was enough.

It will be, then, the end of the eventful Biden era in a few months. It was a clumsy presidency, marked by international scandals, internal crises and, in its last stretch, by concerns about the president's cognitive abilities.

The assessment of the worst presidents in American history is completely subjective. Nevertheless, there is some consensus. For example, the hall of infamy would, of course, have to be occupied by James Buchanan, whose bungling led to the Civil War in the mid-19th century. The blunders were continued by Andrew Johnson. Herbert Hoover could also make the list for his mistreatment of veterans and ineffectiveness during the Great Depression.

In the more contemporary United States, one cannot leave aside Jimmy Carter, with his weak leadership and limitations in solving major challenges, such as the Iran hostage crisis in the late 1970s. With the failure of Operation Eagle Claw to rescue hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the country lost eight service members.

Then there were eight, but when in August 2021 Biden led the calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, 13 U.S. servicemen died. The episode immediately went down in history as one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history. Distressingly, the missteps did not stop there.

Many agree with the opinion that a presidency seen as weak prompted Putin to take advantage of the situation and, late that winter of 2022, invade Ukraine. During the four years of the previous presidency, he had not dared to fire a shot. In view of what had happened in Afghanistan, Putin probably thought that it was the ideal moment to take action.

Iran must have thought the same when, with its proxy Hamas, it invaded Israel in October last year and then, in an unprecedented act, bombed Jerusalem from its own territory.

On a very different scale, the same impression led millions of people to believe that the time to walk to the Rio Grande and cross the border was now. And, then, Biden experienced the worst border debacle in recent U.S. history. While he had the chance, he never had the will to stop the crisis. Instead, he became embroiled in feuds with local authorities who did try, on their own, to stop the overwhelming flow of migrants.

The migration drama, in turn, provoked crime drama. Inevitably, the massive arrival of migrants saturated the country's main cities, which were engulfed by a sudden increase in insecurity. Heinous crimes committed by illegal migrants have been a key topic in public discourse in recent years.

Latin America was also a disaster. The regime of Nicolás Maduro, a focal point for the spread of Islamic terrorism in the continent and the destabilization of regional democracies, was strengthened by the ineffectiveness or lack of skill of an administration that gave too much in exchange for nothing. The return of the “Narcosobrinos” and Alex Saab set a negative tone for relations between the two countries.

A fragile economy led to one of the worst bouts of inflation in recent U.S. history. Fast food became a luxury, and many Americans began to consider leaving the country to live in friendlier cities, such as Madrid or Mexico City.

It is still early, but there will be discussions about whether Biden's one-term presidency will go down in history as the worst or one of the worst, at least in contemporary history. And unlike the polls of this lost campaign, Biden is ahead. It was a gray period, which had fearful consequences for the world.