This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden drawing attacks from Democrats for two nights of strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, the border crisis, and continued worries about reelection polls.
Kept in hiding for most of the week, the president emerged Friday in Pennsylvania — his go-to state — where he was given a new poll showing a slight lead over former President Donald Trump in the key battleground. But he also faced hecklers in Allentown.
In brief remarks, he talked tough about hitting Houthi forces that have been roiling shipping in the Red Sea with attacks. He also noted new reports of lower, though persistent, inflation. “If you notice, they’re feeling much better about how the economy is doing,” Biden claimed of the public’s response. “What we haven’t done is letting them know exactly who got it changed. … Everybody’s doing better and they believe it. They know it. And it’s just beginning to sink in.”
While the election season officially starts Monday when Iowa Republicans caucus, Biden left the campaigning to his wife, first lady Jill Biden. During an MSNBC interview, she tackled concerns about the president’s age, calling it an “asset” over younger Democratic challengers.
In grading a “C” for the week, Democratic pollster John Zogby sounded more positive about the president than in recent weeks. He cited the economy noted the upcoming legal problems Trump will face, and pointed to a new John Zogby Strategies poll that has the two 2024 front runners in a dead heat.
Conservative analyst Jed Babbin graded the week a “D-minus” and also noted the economy with a focus on a report of continued inflation. And he highlighted the disturbing missing-in-action status of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who failed to tell his boss that he was in the hospital for complications following a cancer procedure.
Jed Babbin
Grade: D-
There’s not much to celebrate in the Biden White House this week. Inflation is rearing its ugly head, and someone finally noticed that the secretary of defense went missing for almost a week despite planning for Friday and Saturday’s hits on Houthi targets in Yemen.
America has become accustomed to strong, brilliant men in the job of secretary of defense. Men such as Caspar Weinberger, Bill Perry, Frank Carlucci, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld all served as SecDef. They fitted the job nearly perfectly. If any of them had gone missing for more than 30 minutes, everyone from the president on down would have noticed. Not so Lloyd Austin.
The media is atwitter about Austin’s absence for nearly a week, how nobody followed procedure, and how even Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks (herself on a beach in Puerto Rico) seemed not to notice Austin was MIA. They want to analyze the lies that followed about an “elective surgery.” Austin had prostate cancer and had his prostate removed.
The point they’re all missing is that nobody in the White House — not Old Joe, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, or Secretary of State Antony Blinken — noticed that Austin was gone. They obviously don’t seek or value his advice. This despite the fact that two wars are going on, and Biden is ordering airstrikes on Iranian proxy forces. Austin is not even as essential as a doorstop in the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, Bidenomics has brought the return of inflation, now accelerating past 3.4%. And Biden is campaigning on only one theme: that former President Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. Given his awful record, he can’t articulate why Americans should vote for him other than the fact he’s not Trump. He keeps inventing more reasons for voters to not trust him.
John Zogby
Grade: C
President Joe Biden enters the New Year ready for a fight with a stern warning about the dangers to democracy if former President Donald Trump is returned to office. There was a spark in his Jan. 6, 2021-focused address.
What’s more, the numbers on the economy are working in the new year — the latest on inflation shows there was neither improvement nor slippage. That was a disappointment to both the administration and economists who had predicted a slowdown.
Biden is still averaging a 40% job approval rating, indicating he hasn’t broken through yet.
He does have a likely opponent in Trump, who has mammoth problems of his own. Because of his court problems, Trump could lose his business and brand and be tarnished forever as a charlatan. And he faces one criminal trial after another this year. For Trump, that appears to be a campaign plan.
Meanwhile, I am watching Iowa closely. Don’t let anyone ever tell you the caucuses are not important. There could conceivably be an embarrassment to Trump if he scores well below his expectation of 50% and if challenger Nikki Haley breaks away from what is left of the pack of GOP candidates.
In a head-to-head, the new John Zogby Strategies survey shows Trump in a dead heat with Biden, 47%-46%. There is a lot of campaigning left, criminal trials for Trump and first son Hunter Biden to go.
Finally, do we really need to get bogged down with bombing the Houthi rebels? Regardless of the justification of it, these things have a habit of not going our way.
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Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin.
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His podcast with son and managing partner and pollster Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @ZogbyStrategies.