Joe Biden should copy Barack Obama’s strategy to win a second term, writes Never Trump Republican David Frum back in November. He notes that Obama similarly had weak polling in the year leading up to his re-election.

Barack Obama’s approval in November 2011 stood at 43%. Biden’s approval rating in November according to FiveThirtyEight stands at 39%. At the moment, things don't look any better.

“Whatever your theory, it should take into account a curious coincidence: how closely Biden’s approval numbers have tracked the numbers from former President Barack Obama’s first term. Obama’s numbers slumped in the second half of his third year, 2011. In the middle of that October, his disapproval number reached 41 percent, not very far off from Biden’s 37 percent at the same point in October 2023,” Frum writes in The Atlantic.

“The world of 2011 was a very different place from the world of 2023. The job market was weak, not red hot the way it is now. Immigrants were returning home, not arriving by the millions. China’s economy was booming, not slumping.”

2011 Was a Different World

At the same time, Ukraine had not been invaded by Russia. The Obama administration looked at Vladimir Putin as a potential partner and not as a mortal enemy. Biden traveled to Russia and met with Putin and hailed business opportunities in Russia for Boeing and other American companies.

“A Russian ― the chairman of a Russian organization … said that there was reason for American companies to be here because the markets are here and named some other reasons why it was in the interest of American companies,” Biden told Putin at their 2011 meeting in Moscow. “Russia has the best engineers in the world.  Russia has intellectual capital.  Russia is a great nation.  Your titanium lets the planes fly that you buy.” 

China had yet to fully embark on its policy of military expansion that came into full bloom in Obama’s second term. The Arab Spring revolutions had yet to metastasize into ISIS, and Iran’s proxies had yet to achieve the sort of dominance that has brought the Middle East to the brink of war in 2023.

The world today is different from 2011 in a lot of ways.

Similarities Between 2011 and 2023

However, Frum argues that Republicans ridiculed Obama’s competence, but he sees similarities between then and now.

“Yet if the external facts diverged, the internal dynamics of U.S. politics 12 years ago bore many similarities to those of today. Republican leaders in the House faced a mutiny from their radical fringe. Then, as now, that fringe was impelled by conspiratorial theories: birtherism in those days, elaborate fantasies about Ukraine and the president’s scapegrace son today,” Frum writes. “Speaker John Boehner barely held on to his job—at the price of a battle over the debt ceiling in May 2011 that pushed the United States to the edge of default.”

Frum continued, “Maybe it’s time for an alternative theory of the Obama-Biden third-year slump. Maybe the problem inheres not in the president but in the nature of the coalition a Democratic president heads.”

Biden’s Age a Lingering Issue

A noted difference between Obama and Biden is the latter’s age has become increasingly apparent even to the most disengaged voter. Obama always was sharp with his tongue and quick with his wit. The Biden of 2011 still seemed with it, if not oafish; however, the Biden of today is not the Biden of 12 years ago. He looks frail and often confused.

A Monmouth University poll released in October showed that 76% of voters said they thought Biden was too old. Biden’s age is not going away as an issue; however, Donald Trump’s advanced age could somewhat lessen that disadvantage.

But Trump does not seem as haggard as Biden, which works to his advantage. Age likely will be an important issue next year.

Barack Obama: One America's Worst Presidents?

There have certainly been cases made that Barack Obama was among the worst presidents in U.S. history – but that overlooks such former commander-in-chiefs as Richard Nixon, Herbert Hoover, and John Tyler.

During President Barack Obama's eight years in office, it was common to see a variation of the Old Glory flag of the United States where the stars in the blue field were replaced with Obama's face. And yet, it was just as common to see bumper stickers that infamously proclaimed "Obama: One Big *** Mistake America."

Clearly, there were those who were fans of the former president just as there were those who opposed him and all of his policies. Today, there are, not surprisingly, those who see him as one of America's greatest presidents and those who view him as one of the worst.

A Bad President? How Bad?

There have certainly been cases made that Barack Obama was among the worst presidents in U.S. history – but that overlooks such former commander-in-chiefs as Richard Nixon, Herbert Hoover, and John Tyler.

Nixon, of course, is remembered today for Watergate, while his normalizing of relations with China is largely an afterthought; likewise, Hoover's mishandling of the early years of the Great Depression overshadowed his "Good Neighbor Policy" that improved relations with Latin America. 

Tyler, on the other hand, was a slave owner who went on to serve in the Confederate House of Representatives!

Warren G. Harding would likely be the president most remembered for scandal, was Nixon not elected! Harding was a womanizing poker player whose administration is best remembered for its litany of corruption and scandals.

History has yet to truly judge Donald Trump, but those indictments aren't exactly helping his legacy.

Barack Obama a Lame Duck From 2010

A case could be made that while the Obama administration was largely scandal-free, President Barack Obama also didn't really do all that much. After the passage of the Affordable Care Act – commonly referred to as Obamacare – Obama largely became a caretaker president. 

It wasn't entirely his fault, of course.

As Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institute noted in 2018 while looking back at the legacy of Obama, "By 2010 Obama's fate was sealed. In the midterm elections, Republicans ran on the slow recovery, the perception that the stimulus package favored Wall Street, not Main Street, and the Democrats’ tone-deaf obsession with the health care bill. They easily took control of the House, picking up sixty-three seats—the biggest midterm election gains for the out party since 1938. And from then on, the Obama presidency struggled under a radicalized Republican Party.”

Obama's Foreign Policy – His Biggest Failing?

When future historians look back at the Obama legacy, what might be most remembered is his failure with foreign policy. It is true that Obama inherited what has been described as an "awful mess," which included the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, instead of finding a way to win them, he sought to end them by any means.

He further dismissed the Islamic State (ISIS) as the "JV team," and within a few years, they evolved from relative obscurity to the world's most brutal terrorist network. 

During a 2012 presidential primary, Obama won praise for a "zinger" delivered at GOP candidate Mitt Romney who had suggested Russia was "without question, our number one geopolitical foe."

Obama stated somewhat smugly, "Gov. Romney, I'm glad you recognize al-Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what is the biggest geopolitical group facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaida. You said Russia. And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. Because the Cold War has been over for 20 years. But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policy of the 1950s, and the economic policies of the 1920s."

Fast forward a decade, to February 2022, as Russia prepared to invade Ukraine, and CNN offered the headline, "It's time to admit it: Mitt Romney was right about Russia." Moreover, it was also under Obama's watch that Russia illegally annexed Crimea and engaged in a proxy war with Ukraine in the Donbas.

Moreover, China continued to expand its presence in the South China Sea.

Finally, while Obama promised to lead "the most transparent administration in history," it actually proved to be the least transparent, and until Trump, the Obama White House was the most antagonistic toward the media since Nixon. 

Whether all that will put Obama on future "worst" lists has yet to be seen.