There are multiple reasons, besides the continued polarization in this nation, as to why Joe Biden’s approval ratings are no better than were Donald Trump’s.
There’s the steep rise in inflation. There’s fatigue about the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s Biden’s push for a huge expansion in social programs that raises concerns even among fiscally conscious Democrats.
The president hasn’t helped himself either by applying a heavy hand to try to compel Americans to do the responsible thing: get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
A series of judges has now blocked his vaccine mandates, saying they are an overreach of the executive branch’s constitutional authority.
Many Americans would agree. They don’t like to be told what to do. It runs against the grain of a country founded on a strong belief in individual liberty. They particularly don’t like it if they feel they are being coerced by the government.
Coercion is exactly the approach Biden adopted when he issued three mandates to try to get the nation’s vaccination rate higher. He threatened hospitals and other health-care facilities with the loss of Medicare and Medicaid funding if they did not require their workers to be vaccinated. He threatened federal contractors — everything from road builders to universities — with loss of federal dollars if they didn’t do the same. And he threatened large employers with the long arm of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, arguing that failure to compel vaccination created a dangerous working environment.
Biden, in other words, decided he would punish businesses and organizations financially if they refused to strong-arm their workers into toeing the line on COVID-19 vaccination.
That not only irked the unvaccinated. It irritated many who believe in vaccination but are not comfortable prying into the personal health decisions of their employees, or who feared the mandates would exacerbate already difficult labor shortages.
The pandemic is a public health crisis of a magnitude that the world has not seen in a century. Even during a crisis, though, there are limits as to what the government can and should do. That’s why we have built into our democracy a system of checks and balances, in which one branch of government can block another if it concludes there is an abuse of power.
The judges’ rulings are not a final say on these vaccine mandates. The Biden administration has said it will continue to defend them in court. Even if the president wins the legal argument, though, it won’t improve his approval rating. If anything, it might cause it to sink lower.
He is fighting against an independent streak that runs deeply in this nation. “Live Free or Die” is not just the state motto of New Hampshire. It’s how most Americans feel.
- The Greenwood Commonwealth
