OPINION:
The president’s sub-basement approval ratings have something to do with his anger-control problem.
In key swing states that Democrats need to hold the Senate this year, the president is waterlogged. In Ohio, President Biden’s approval rating is 34%. In Arizona and Georgia, it’s 36%. In Nevada, he’s breezing along with 38%. That’s why Democratic candidates are avoiding him like the proverbial plague.
Mr. Biden’s unpopularity is based in part on high energy costs, 40-year record inflation, rising crime and a porous border. Every time we see a picture of the victim of another senseless homicide, hordes of illegals streaming across our southern border, or the price at the pump continuing to climb, his stock falls a few points.
But it’s also about image. The American people want a leader they can like — not an embarrassment who reminds them of an angry old man screaming at children as they pass his house.
The most popular presidents exuded confidence and cheerful optimism. FDR was the Happy Warrior telling us we had “nothing to fear but fear itself.” Ronald Reagan, with his gentle humor, said it was “morning in America.”
Mr. Biden is all scowls. finger-pointing, angry accusations and attempts to demonize his opponents.
We saw glimpses of it in the 2020 campaign, like the time he told a Detroit autoworker who challenged him on gun control not to be “such a horse’s ass” and that he was “full of s—-.”
This is the man the media sold as good old Uncle Joe, a bit befuddled at times, but really kindhearted. It worked while he was sequestered in his basement. When he emerged into the bright light of the presidency, it was exit Dr. Jekyll and enter Mr. Hyde — stage left.
Anger is often a sign of a deep-seated inferiority complex. To paraphrase one of Winston Churchill’s witticisms, Mr. Biden has much to feel inferior about.
Perhaps the president suspects that, like Jimmy Carter, he’s an accident of history. His 35 years in the Senate were undistinguished.
He was forced to withdraw from the 1988 race for the Democratic presidential nomination when it was learned that he’d plagiarized a speech by British Labour Leader Neil Kinnock, word for word. Had he stayed in, he might have ended up copying a third grader’s book report.
In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama (who’d been in the Senate for less than three years) plucked him out of obscurity as his running mate because, as an outsider, he needed someone to reassure Democratic regulars, and party hack Joe was reliable and available.
In 2020, he got the nomination by default, because the party was desperate to stop Bernie Sanders and Mr. Biden was the candidate others in the race could be persuaded to coalesce around, in part because they figured that, if elected, he wouldn’t serve more than one term.
Like the Shmoo from Li’l Abner, he was whatever you wanted him to be — a progressive stalwart or a conservative insider, a neo-socialist or just another welfare state politician, someone who claimed antifa didn’t exist and refused to comment on Black Lives Matter, or law and order all the way.
Once he took the oath of office, he was defined by his temper tantrums. Members of the press who are on his side are raged at for not understanding that he didn’t really say what he obviously said.
His opponents aren’t just wrong, they’re racists (the reincarnation of Bull Connor), semi-fascists and insurrectionists who incite violence and threaten the very fabric of democracy, he raves.
Admittedly, some of it is age-related. We get testy as we get older, and he’s the oldest man to serve in the presidency. He’s probably also upset because people laugh at him as he stumbles on the steps of Air Force One, falls off his bicycle and looks helplessly for a way off the stage.
The anger also comes from a sense of entitlement. How dare you question his policies or competence! He’s been in national politics for a geologic age. He spent more than three decades in the Senate, eight years as vice president and now he’s finally achieved the highest office in the land, even if he doesn’t quite know what to do with it.
Anger may not be his greatest liability. But it turns off independents and causes concern for the unsteady hand wavering near the nuclear button. Rage and nukes are a lethal mix.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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