Washington Post calls the Biden presidency a complicated mixture.

A disenchanted public sees mostly failure and incompetence.

How many “senior White House officials, Cabinet secretaries, outside allies [of Joe Biden] and strategists” does it take to stitch together an apology for the Biden presidency? In the case of the Washington Post, it took 80. That’s the number of Biden apologists the Post says it interviewed for this article.

Even with all that help, the best the Post can do is to conclude that that, so far, Biden’s first term is a “complicated” mixture of “remarkable achievements and enormous disappointments.” But what are those “remarkable achievements”? The Post highlights two: “the most successful vaccine rollout in history” and “mitigation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

But the vaccine rollout was well underway when Biden was inaugurated, thanks to the efforts of the Trump administration. And the Post provides no support for its claim that this was the most successful rollout in history.

What metrics did the Post use to judge the efficacy of the rollout for which Team Biden takes credit? The Post doesn’t say.

One way to measure the success of the rollout is to compare the percentage of Americans vaccinated against covid with the percentages in other nations. Judged this way, the rollout was not particularly successful. Judged in comparison to advanced European nations, it was not successful at all.

The mitigation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine truly is a remarkable accomplishment. . .by the Ukrainians. Biden deserves some credit, in my view, for supplying Ukraine with arms. However, there is nothing remarkable about providing military assistance to a friendly nation under attack by a U.S. adversary. This is what Americans should expect from any president.

What about the “disappointments" of the Biden presidency the Post mentions? The inability of vaccines to prevent the spread of covid can legitimately be called a disappointment for which Biden bears no responsibility, though he did over-promise on the efficacy of these vaccines.

But the Afghanistan fiasco isn’t a disappointment, it’s an epic failure. According to the Post, Biden blames the intelligence community for underestimating how quickly the Taliban would reach Kabul. The Post seems to accept this excuse, criticizing Biden only for promising that the evacuation would not resemble the one in Saigon.

In fact, as discussed here, there were “numerous warnings across multiple government agencies” that the Taliban’s advance would be swift. Rather than heeding these warnings, Biden decided to suspend air, intelligence, and contractor support to the Afghan Air Force, which depended on continued U.S. assistance to maintain its advanced planes and helicopters.

Even earlier on, in January 2021 when Biden became president, officials within the administration began to raise concerns over the lack of planning with respect to the long-term maintenance over Afghanistan’s advance air fleet – it’s primary competitive edge over the Taliban. Biden didn’t care. He was hell bent on leaving Afghanistan, consequences be damned. He didn’t want to hear from the military, which he blamed for keeping us engaged in Afghanistan during the Obama years.

The Post doesn’t mention any of this. That’s what happens when reporters rely on 80 pro-Biden sources and don’t do independent research.

Runaway inflation is another disappointment failure of the Biden presidency. The Post acknowledges that Biden’s reckless spending programs are partially responsible for the inflation. Again, however, the Post reports uncritically on attempts to blame Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen who, at the outset of his presidency, reportedly advised Biden to “go big” on pandemic response spending.

Come on, man. Biden didn’t need Bernanke and Yellen to encourage him to spend big. Biden has long supported massive government spending programs and was all the more eager to spend as president, in the hope of creating an FDR-style legacy.

Even when the inflation rate passed 5 percent in the summer of 2021, Biden still wanted to “go big.” He agreed with Senate Democratic leaders on a reconciliation package of $3,5 trillion. It would have passed, but for Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema.

The White House’s response to Manchin was a 10-paragraph statement that, in the words of the Post, “excoriated” the Senator.

The Post tries to end its piece on a high note. It points to a few legislative wins for the Democrats, none of which is likely to amount to much and one of which — his reconciliation spending bill — is actually a defeat inasmuch as the amount appropriated is about one-sixth of what Biden sought.

It points to the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion. That’s another defeat if Biden actually cares about the issue. That he doesn’t is obvious from the fact that he has been on both sides of the debate during his career.

However, the Post suggests that the abortion decision, along with Biden’s legislative wins, his response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the (stalled) cancellation of student debt, fueled a comeback for the president.

The comeback isn’t much of one. The spread in Biden’s approval rating is -11.4, according to Real Clear Politics. During much of the summer, it was around -16.

Democrats are sure to lose their majority in the House and might well lose it in the Senate. Few Democratic candidates seem interested in campaigning with Biden.

The Post’s mini-comeback narrative ignores polls that show Biden running no better than even with Donald Trump in a 2024 rematch (God forbid); polls that show more than 70 percent of Americans don’t want Biden to seek the office again; and a poll that shows most Americans are concerned about his mental health, with 36 percent “very concerned.”

Contrary to the Post and its 80 Biden-backing sources, this presidency is not “complicated.” Its failures outweigh its less than “remarkable” successes by a wide margin. The American people have lost confidence in Biden’s ability, and indeed mental capacity, to lead.

As of now, it’s as simple as that.