Who to blame for Joe Biden's low approval ratings

Polarization and inflation are particular drags, but the president has little control over them. His legislative agenda is also not a panacea

There have been a string of articles this week about how Joe Biden is failing to meet expectations. Axios writes that he “closes out Year 1 on an epic losing streak.” POLITICO reports that a plurality of voters give Biden a failing grade for his first year. And Nate Cohn at the New York Times maintains that Biden was “supposed to be another FDR” but has failed. “One year into his presidency, no one is confusing Mr. Biden for Mr. Roosevelt,” Cohn writes. “Not with his legislative agenda stalled and his approval rating mired in the low forties… It’s not so much Mr. Roosevelt’s New Deal as Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. One launched an era of Democratic dominance; the other brought that era to its end.”

I think there are some obvious mistakes here. It is important to point them out because the many misreadings of this moment obfuscate how presidents actually claim credit, and how voter psychology actually reacts to their successes or failures.

But before we get there, I want to note t…