Was Joe Biden a good president?

Was Biden a good president? I'll pull together how his record is judged across the aisle.

Whether Joe Biden was a "good" president is subjective and depends on what criteria are used - policy impact, economic management, crisis leadership, or public approval. His presidency from January 20, 2021 to January 20, 2025 is generally described as mixed and consequential.

Arguments supporters cite

Legislative accomplishments: His most notable legislative accomplishments included the American Rescue Plan (ARPA), the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act.

More detailed summaries describe those bills as driving unprecedented federal investment and private-sector commitments for manufacturing and semiconductors, while new Medicare authorities negotiated lower prices for certain drugs.

The record is described as combining substantive policy accomplishments — in infrastructure, industry policy, drug pricing, social supports and judicial appointments.

Economic record: Measured macroeconomics under Biden include a rebound in real GDP that peaked at 6.2% in 2021 and multiple years of growth at or above roughly 2.5%, and the addition of millions of jobs.

Arguments critics cite

Failures and vulnerabilities: The same assessments note pronounced vulnerabilities in crisis management, inflation control and immigration, and that substantive accomplishments were paired with glaring failures and political liabilities in Afghanistan, inflation control, border politics, and messaging.

Specific events: High-profile foreign-policy episodes — most notably the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan — proved politically toxic and eroded early approval margins.

Criticism of that period also cited skyrocketing prices, soaring COVID-19 cases, and millions of illegal border crossings, and that many Americans were worse off than they were one year ago in his first year. Rising inflation, record-high numbers of unauthorized border crossings from Mexico, and international challenges in Ukraine and the Middle East kept Biden's approval ratings in the low 40s or high 30s thereafter.

A more general retrospective characterized his term as paradoxical: substantial accomplishments alongside glaring failures that together make legacy assessments contested.

Public approval

Public opinion polling was consistently weak in the second half of his term:

Gallup noted that in Americans’ evaluation, economic hardships (especially inflation) and international conflicts evidently outweighed any legislative wins such as historic investments in infrastructure and climate change policy, as well as generally solid GDP growth, low unemployment and record highs in the stock market.

Historian / expert rankings

Among scholars, the assessment has been higher than among the public:

Historians have noted such a ranking was unusually high for a presidency without military victories or institutional expansion.

Balanced conclusion

Fact-check summaries offer this framework:

If “great” is judged by sweeping legislative impact, durable economic recovery, and structural investments in industry and health care, the record supports a positive, consequential presidency with lasting policy footprints. If “great” is measured by public approval, crisis management optics and political dominance at the ballot box, the record is weak.

The impartial summary offered in those analyses is that Biden was a consequential president with major policy achievements but not a broadly popular or universally admired one; labels like “great” depend on whether policy accomplishments or public standing carry more weight for the evaluator.