Was Biden a good president? I'll pull diverse evaluations of his record — achievements, setbacks, and how historians and polls rank him.
Was Joe Biden a good president is a subjective question, and evaluations differ sharply between public opinion polls, historians, and partisan assessments. His 2021-2025 presidency is generally described as consequential but mixed:
Public Approval - Low
By public approval measures, Biden left office unpopular:
•He began with 57% approval in Gallup's first measurement in early 2021.
•His full-term average of 42.2% in Gallup polling was the second lowest of any post-World War II president, and his average across his term was about 42.2% to 43% in different aggregations.
•He left office with about 40% approval according to the final Gallup poll conducted between January 2-15, 2025, with disapproval 14 to 20 points underwater.
•An Associated Press-NORC Center survey near the end of his term found only about a quarter of U.S. adults regard Biden as a 'good' or 'great' president.
Analysts note his approval trended from above 50% in the first year to a consistent mid-to-high 30s finish in many final polls.
Historians' Ranking - Higher
Academic assessments have been more positive:
•A 2024 survey of 154 political science experts — the Presidential Greatness Project — ranked Joe Biden as the 14th best president in U.S. history.
•That put him ahead of Ronald Reagan (16th) and well ahead of George W. Bush (32nd) in that survey.
Historians generally rate presidents across standardized attributes — such as vision, crisis leadership, public persuasion and moral authority— which explains part of the divergence from contemporary public polls.
Points Supporters Cite as Achievements
Supporters and nonpartisan summaries point to several major legislative and policy actions:
•The Biden White House shepherded several consequential laws through narrow Democratic majorities: the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package enacted in March 2021; a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law; and steps to enable Medicare drug-price negotiations, including actions like the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act and Respect for Marriage Act.
•Job creation: the administration cites 16.6 million jobs created and unemployment below 4% for 28 months, with academic assessments noting 2.23 million jobs in his final year, driven in part by investments from the Infrastructure Deal and the CHIPS and Science Act.
•Judicial appointments: appointing roughly 235 federal judges, with a majority women and a large share from non-white backgrounds, surpassing recent presidents in single-term appointments.
•Foreign policy: rejoining the Paris Agreement and WHO early in his term and launching initiatives like the Partnership for Global Infrastructure, and orchestrating support for Ukraine which is described as his biggest foreign-policy accomplishment.
Some supporters have called it the most productive legislative record since Lyndon Johnson's, achieved with thin congressional margins during a pandemic recovery, and historian Robert McElvaine hails him as a "great president" rivaling Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Others summarize he leaves as a remarkably consequential one-term president, with the U.S. economy performing extremely well under Biden, far outpacing its peers.
Points Critics Cite as Failures
Retrospectives note pronounced vulnerabilities:
•Inflation and costs: Prices rose fast in 2021-2022. Inflation reached 9.1% in June 2022, the highest in about 40 years. CPI rose 21.3% between December 2020 and December 2024 with an annualized rate near 5.3%, although inflation fell to about 3% by 2024.
•Border/immigration: Border agents recorded more than 2 million encounters at the southwest border in both fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2023. Comprehensive immigration reform stalled despite U.S. Citizenship Act proposals, and the administration was criticized for stopping border wall construction early and later limiting asylum by executive order in June 2024. Some assessments call the southern border his biggest single failure.
•Afghanistan withdrawal: In August 2021, U.S. forces left Afghanistan and the Taliban took power, with a bombing at Kabul airport killing 13 U.S. service members. The chaotic evacuation became a lasting political liability and was called an obvious failure by critics including even Hunter Biden in a later interview describing the exit as an "obvious f–ing failure".
•Stalled agenda: His larger Build Back Better plan stalled in the Senate in 2021 and voting rights bills also failed in 2022.
•Other criticisms: The Supreme Court blocked his vaccine-or-test rule for large employers and more Americans died of COVID-19 in 2021 than in 2020, and households endured high gas prices passing $5 a gallon in June 2022.
More broadly, analysts note that several policy ambitions went unmet and that inflation and concerns about border security depressed public confidence and contributed to low approval ratings.
Summary
As with many presidents, assessments note: "All US presidents leave mixed legacies. The best make mistakes, and the worst get some things right. But Joe Biden's legacy is more mixed than most".
•If judged by legislative output, job recovery after COVID, infrastructure investment, clean-energy/manufacturing investments, and judicial appointments, supporters argue he was effective.
•If judged by voter confidence, inflation management, border security, and crisis execution (particularly Afghanistan), critics argue he was ineffective, which is reflected in low approval and the perception that he would be remembered as below average or poor.
Whether he was a "good" president therefore depends on which criteria — policy achievements and historical institutional impact vs. immediate economic and security outcomes and public approval — a person weights most heavily.