As news of Jimmy Carter’s passing spread, it didn’t take long for the perennial debate over America’s worst president to be rekindled. Many remarked, half-jokingly, that Carter lived long enough to see himself lose the dubious distinction of being history’s worst president. This, of course, is a fair argument to make, but so many people seem to be under the impression that it was Joe Biden who dethroned him.
I take some issue with that.
When critics argue that Joe Biden’s presidency has been worse than Jimmy Carter’s, they often miss an important point: the Biden presidency isn’t a standalone disaster. In pretty much every meaningful way, the Biden administration has been a continuation of the Obama administration. If Biden is worse than Carter, then Obama must also be in the conversation, as Biden’s agenda has largely been about restoring the Obama-era status quo. The evidence is clear, and the similarities are undeniable.
Heck, during the 2020 campaign, many of us were saying that Biden would be Barack Obama’s third term and felt vindicated when he proved our predictions correct. From his first days in office, Biden’s actions signaled a return to the Obama status quo. He loaded his administration with Obama administration retreads, and he sought to erase the progress made by Donald Trump and reinstated regulations, policies, and initiatives that had defined the Obama years.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a Biden policy that wasn’t an Obama policy first. In his first weeks in office, Biden signed an executive order expanding Obamacare.
Biden's economic policy was also the more expensive sequel to Barack Obama's. Biden’s American Rescue Plan of 2021 was basically a larger version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — and both devastated our economy. Obama’s stimulus slowed economic recovery and stifled job creation, and Biden’s gave us historic inflation.
His push for sweeping climate initiatives, such as those embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act, echoes Obama’s green economy initiatives, which prioritized enriching their green energy industry supporters instead of energy independence, leading to record-high gas prices that crippled average Americans. Have you forgotten how high gas prices got under Barack Obama?
Biden’s foreign policy is perhaps the most glaring example of his effort to restore the Obama-era approach. The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which led to the Taliban taking control of the country, was an echo of the rise of ISIS after Barack Obama withdrew from Iraq.
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Barack Obama desperately sought a nuclear deal with Iran that would give the country a path to a nuclear weapon. Donald Trump got us out of it, and then Joe Biden not only attempted to revive the deal but has spent much of his presidency empowering Iran, giving them access to billions of dollars to fund terrorism.
On social and cultural issues, Biden has amplified Obama’s radical agenda. Barack Obama unilaterally reinterpreted Title IX to include “gender identity,” Donald Trump reversed that policy, and Joe Biden promptly restored the Obama standard.
I could go on, but the thread connecting Biden’s presidency to Obama’s is clear: Biden didn’t chart a new course for America but rather steered us back down the path Obama took us on. If we agree that Biden has surpassed Carter as the worst president — a view I suspect most share — it’s because he’s essentially Obama 2.0, delivering a third Obama term with the same playbook but with greater consequences. We can’t say that Biden was a worse president than Jimmy Carter without saying that Barack Obama was also worse because the debacle that was the Biden presidency wouldn’t have been possible without that of Barack Obama.
So, in the end, Jimmy Carter isn't the second-worst president in history; he's the third. The real question is, who is technically the worst: Joe Biden or Barack Obama?
