Joe Biden is a good man, husband, father and president. He is a wise manly father figure who cherishes and is loyally supportive of his wife, family and neighbors while not taking himself too seriously. He is also a competent public servant who consistently puts welfare of the constituents he swore to protect from foreign and domestic enemies before personal pecuniary benefit. He honors his marriage vows, and oath of office, both of which are important to me.

An experienced politician he calmly assembled a team of competent public servants, and then without fanfare, restored order to the Office of President of The United States of America during the most chaotic transition of power this nation ever endured.

Our Capital had just been invaded by violent insurrectionists who were attempting to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power, as designated in the Constitution of The United States of America, and seize the presidency for their leader. Joe Biden calmly transformed chaos into a quietly competent transition of power while, at the same time, dealing with a raging pandemic that eventually resulted in more than one-million American deaths and the worst economic collapse in decades.

Joe Biden's first priority was control of the pandemic so Americans could return to living normal lives. He presided over distribution and administration of miracle vaccines that dramatically reduced the severity of the disease among persons who chose to take advantage of his generosity.

His second priority was restoration of the economy which is very complicated given economics is an unscientific art. The economy runs on people spending cash. Sending people too little, or instead sending cash to banks for them to hand out as was done in 2009, would slow recovery and could lead to recession. Sending too much cash directly to people, businesses and institutions can lead to inflation. He chose the second option of sending money to people, businesses and institutions which dramatically created jobs, decreased child poverty by half, increased wages and got the economy going -- but also increased inflation.

His third priority was addressing control of climate change which increasingly severe floods, heat waves, droughts, fires and freezes are making that harder to ignore. Getting Congress to address this problem took longer but finally passed after 20 months of relentless effort.

Domestically successful,
with the smallest possible congressional majority,
President Biden led development and passage of seven major bills that provide solutions to problems that impact the lives of middle-class Americans.

1. A bipartisan infrastructure bill to repair road and bridges, renovate ports and public transportation, expand broadband access and replace every lead pipe in America.
2. A COVID-19 relief bill that gave $1,400 per person to financially struggling Americans, extended unemployment support, decreased child poverty by more than half, and provided billions of dollars to help businesses, schools, colleges and universities pay employees and stay open.
3. Deployment of the Covid-19 vaccination program that resulted in vaccination of 74% of all Americans.
4. Expansion of access to affordable health care to five million more Americans.
5. Creation of six million jobs and the lowest number of unemployment claims since 1969.
6. Passage of a bill to address climate change that increasingly disastrous floods, freezing, fires and heat waves makes difficult to ignore.
7. Addition of a 15% income tax on corporations making more than $1 billion in profit per year and a slight increase in income tax for families earning more than $400,000 per year.
8. Passage of the Chips Act that returns computer chip manufacture to this nation by funding development of factories in Arizona, Texas, New York, Vermont, Colorado, Oregon, Minnesota and New Hampshire.

Requiem: The 2024 election campaign was a contest of opposites. Conservatives, want to continue improvement of the republic inherited from Founding Fathers and campaigned on "Joy and freedom for everyone to become the best they can be". MAGA (Make America Great Again) campaigned on "Hate and retribution". MAGA won. December 2024 President Biden summed up what was accomplished during his Presidency. The president noted that Trump is inheriting a strong economy. Biden shifted the U.S. economy from 40 years of supply-side economics that had transferred about $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 1% and hollowed out the middle class. By investing in the American people, the Biden team expanded the economy from "the middle out and the bottom up," as Biden says, and created an economy that he rightfully called "the envy of the world." Biden listed the numbers: more than 16 million new jobs, the most in any four-year presidential term in U.S. history; low unemployment; a record 20 million applications for the establishment of new businesses; the stock market hitting record highs. Biden called out that in the two years since Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, the private sector has jumped on the public investments to invest more than a trillion dollars in clean energy and advanced manufacturing. Disruptions from the pandemic-especially the snarling of supply chains-and Russian president Vladimir Putin's attack on Ukraine created a global spike in inflation; the administration brought those rates back to around the Fed's target of 2%. Biden pointed out that "[l]ike most…[great] economic developments, this one is neither red nor blue, and America's progress is everyone's progress."

Foreigners attacked
while President Biden was focused on solving domestic problems.

Afghanistan collapsed. President Trump had quietly made a deal with the Taliban that if they did not attack us we would withdraw all United States forces by May 1, 2021. Taliban leaders used the truce to bribe local and military Afghan leaders then attacked the central Afghan government as we evacuated our troops. While President Biden mobilized the largest and most successful mass airlift evacuation in history that evacuated more than 120,000 men, women and children, the televised chaos of thousands of men, women and children trying to escape the Taliban was horrific. Our short attention spans help everyone, but persons directly connected to Afghans, to forget the many decades of Americans being maimed and killed in that "graveyard of empires."

Putin's invasion of Ukraine was a surprise. Seven decades of peace, economic interdependence and prosperity made it easy to consider NATO an obsolete relic of World War II. Invasion of Ukraine violently ended that complacency and Russian aggression is serious given Putin's threat to retaliate with nuclear weapons should his regime be in danger of collapse.

Biden's response was to quickly reactivate NATO which was relatively easy given nations bordering Russia know they are Putin's next target.

Having just begun to enjoy the prosperity and pride of being an emerging democracy Ukrainians are determined to repel the invasion. Incompetence of the Russian military, combined with NATO and United States provision of modern weapons to intensely patriotic Ukrainians, stalled Putin's invasion.

President Biden's second response was to turn Russian money laundering into a weapon of war. Russian financial institutions, government agencies, and wealthy individuals bank outside Russia to protect their money from theft. President Biden mobilized the International Banking Community to "lock" all Russian government, business, and individual accounts making it impossible for them to pay bills, purchase anything and conduct business. Almost all international companies fled Russia; the luxury assets of Putin's closest associates have been seized and Russia is finding it increasingly difficult to fund Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

China is increasingly aggressive and the Central Intelligence Agency is concerned that Taiwan will be attacked. Until very recently Americans believed helping China prosper would result in it becoming more like us and until recently that appeared to be what was happening. Things changed in 2013 when Xi Jinping became President for life.

His installation of a repressive government in Hong Kong, detainment of millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps, construction of a 600 ship navy and military bases in the South China Sea, threats against Australia and the Philippines, constant violations of Taiwan airspace and aggressive interceptions of ships in international water are current reality.

President Biden's strong response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine may make war with China less likely. President Biden's organization of a NATO like Asian alliance that includes Australia, England, India, South Korea and Japan, and demonstration of the power of the Economic War he launched against Russia, have resulted in angry Chinese denunciations of The United States of America like those we ignored in the fifties and sixties.

Personally over the years eleven Chinese university professors "home-stayed" with my wife and me over their New Years Break. All sincerely believe China is the "Central Kingdom" around which the world revolves. On the other hand all experienced the Cultural Revolution and are rightly fearful of civil unrest. They endure constant surveillance, repression and autocracy because that is the price of upward economic mobility.

While China is militarily stronger than before, and while China could destroy Taiwan, doing so will destroy the Chinese economy. Economic War, and blockaid of Chinese ports that inport oil and export goods would create civil unrest which is what Chinese leaders like Xi fear most.

In my opinion
constant repeated attempts to denigrate Joe Biden,
and delegitimize his presidency,
are dangerous.

Paternalistic authoritarianism, often with a religious bias, is how almost all nations are governed today, and have always been, governed. Our forefathers knew authoritarian leaders always eventually become corrupt so they deliberately limited the power of the executive. They created a tripartite check and balance system wherein elected representatives propose law, the executive administers law and judges determine legality of the law.

Our forefathers deliberately made it hard for an executive to make things happen. Humans want a father to protect and provide for us and to make wrongs right. We become frustrated when the new president we voted for is not able to issue an edict that immediately solves whatever problem we elected him to solve. The problem is world-wide and there is a world-wide movement to replace democratic republican governments with authoritarianism. The January 6th insurrection was an attempted coup.

Hitler, Castro, Chavez and other dictators failed in their first attempted coup, corrected their mistakes and then succeeded in taking control of what were often democratic republic governments.

There is no guarantee frustrated citizens will not seize control of the presidency and replace our presently checked and balanced President with an authoritarian who will ignore The Constitution of The United States of America, replace civil servants with cronies, and turn our democratic republic into a Kleptocracy. "KLEPTOCRACY is government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed" (https://www.merriam-webster.com)

JLB 2023