I appreciate that Fox News has published at least two positive endorsements of President Biden’s first year. Other than the weak efforts by poor Jen Psaki to lay out the positives of President Biden’s actions, I had not seen any outside explanations of why we should be glad that Joe Biden is President of the United States.

One of the pieces (Biden Gave a Commanding Performance At His Press Conference) is by Kevin Walling. Unfortunately, the piece is nothing but vague characterizations of events and statements that make accurately measuring and commenting on them difficult. Well, except that Mr. Walling said,

Americans saw in their commander-in-chief someone willing to speak earnestly and frankly with the American people, and his command performance Wednesday harkened back to an earlier Biden from the campaign trail: forceful, direct, self-deprecating and earnest.

It was so earnest and frank that several Administration officials had to rush out immediately with “clarifications.” And press secretary Psaki had to spend most of her press conference this morning undoing (or “clarifying”) what the President said. So maybe the President’s press conference performance wasn’t all that commanding.

So we move to the more substantive piece by Juan Williams (Five Things to Celebrate From Biden’s First Year). Cutting and pasting from the piece:

1. Biggest drop in unemployment in his first 12 months of any president in history
2. Highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the measure of the growth of the American economy, in nearly 40 years.
3. During Biden’s first year in office the stock market has seen its value soar go up 25%.
4. The country has avoided another lockdown despite the rise of a new coronavirus variant
5. By the end of last year nearly all schools were able to reopen thanks to Biden’s successful distribution of the vaccine.

Things 1, 2, and 3 are all things that most likely would have happened even if a house plant occupied the Oval Office (re house plants, see discussion on the thread “Remember – Biden Was Always A Plant” by @BDB ). Local and state restrictions on liberty and economic activity in 2020 were so severe that by January 2021 there was nowhere to go but up. I’d be more interested in a comparison to late 2019.

“Lockdowns” (Thing 4) were mostly functions of local and state governments, not the national government, so there is little basis for Biden to claim credit for a lack of lockdowns.

Closing down the schools (Thing 5, again, mostly decisions made by local and state governments) was clearly a mistake, and as it turns out the availability of vaccines (especially the availability to children) was not a major factor in decisions to reopen schools.

Mr. Williams is crediting to President Biden “successes” that are almost or totally independent of Mr. Biden’s decisions or actions. I don’t think inevitabilities are reasons to “celebrate.”

So I guess I’m still waiting for someone to explain why the American public should be glad Joe Biden is President of the United States.