Joe Biden is a good man, husband, father and president. A wise manly father figure loyal and supportive of his wife, family and neighbors he never appeared to take himself too seriously. He consistently put welfare of constituents he swore to protect ahead of personal enrichment. He honors his marriage vows, and oath of office, both of which are important to me.

He took office as our Capital was being invaded by violent insurrectionists out 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 this nation's history.

Control of the pandemic was his first priority. He presided over distribution and administration of miracle vaccines that dramatically reduced the severity of the disease among citizens who chose to take advantage of his generosity.

Restoration of the economy was his second priority. 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.

Third priority was control of climate change. 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 8 major bills that
provide solutions to problems that impact 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.

 

Foreigners attacked
while President Biden was solving domestic problems.

Afghanistan collapsed. President Trump had quietly made a deal with the Taliban that if they did not attack American troops 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 as soon as we evacuated our troops and Bagram Airforce Base which ended air support of Afghan troops. While President Biden mobilized the largest and most successful mass airlift evacuation in history and evacuated more than 120,000 men, women and children, televised chaos of thousands of men, women and children trying to escape the Taliban was horrific. Afghanistan is an unsaveable "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. Russian aggression is serious given Putin's threat to retaliate with nuclear weapons should his regime be in danger of collapse.

Biden quickly reactivated NATO which was relatively easy given nations bordering Russia know they are next.

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. Russia is finding it increasingly difficult to fund Putin's invasion of Ukraine even though nations like India, Iran and China have developed ways to smuggle oil out of Russia at discount prices.

China is increasingly aggressive. 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 until 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 if they see us with many allies and too strong to attack. 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. PRC Chinese endure constant surveillance, repression and autocracy because that is the price they have to pay to stay out of prison.

While China is militarily stronger than before, and could destroy Taiwan, President Biden's alliances will destroy the Chinese economy. Economic War, and blockaid of Chinese ports that inport oil and food would create civil unrest which is what Chinese leaders like Xi fear most. On the other hand while it will be relatively easy to starve China of oil and food starving half the popuulation might not be too high a price for Xi to pay.

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

Paternalistic authoritarianism, often with religious blessing, is how almost all nations 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 them, to provide for them and to right wrongs. We become frustrated when a new president is unable to issue an edict that immediately solves whatever problem we elected him to solve. The January 6th insurrection was an attempted coup.

Hitler, Castro and Chavez
failed in their first attempted coup,
corrected their mistakes and then succeeded.

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)

John Adams, second President of The United States and a man very involved in designing our government, was Ambassador to England in 1787 and missed the Constitutional Convention during which our Founding Fathers created The Constitution of The United States of America. In a letter he wrote "

Remember, democracy never lasts long,
it soon wastes, exhaust and murders itself.
There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."