No one expected Joe Biden to leave the White House with confetti and a ticker-tape parade. But the speed at which his approval rating sank in his final months was startling—even by modern presidential standards. Here was a politician once hyped as the “empathy president,” the unifier-in-chief who might quell America’s tribal feuds, instead limping away with some of the lowest approval numbers in recent memory.
I was at a newsroom meeting before the election and someone I hadn’t ever spoken with said, “I don’t know a single person who actually wants Biden to run again. Like, not one! It’s incredible. You’d think there’d be a smattering of pride in having an incumbent, but no. Honestly, half of them already have a ‘Don’t blame me, I voted for the other guy’ bumper sticker ready to go.”
What amused me wasn’t that she disliked Biden—people dislike presidents all the time—but that she sounded shocked anyone could still be on board with the man at all. Biden supporters had become for her what so many consider Trump devotees to be: an alien species barely glimpsed outside viral videos, glimpses that only confirm one’s preconceptions.
For all the talk of “divided America,” this phenomenon—where the popularity of a sitting president plunges, leaving us to wonder how any rational person could still support him—seems to be the new normal. Rather than stepping back and taking stock, we blame the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the entire state of the world: from the economy’s ups and downs to the fractious state of civil society. More than that, we act as though there couldn’t possibly be an honest citizen left who approves of the current administration.
Such bafflement is nothing new, of course. Biden is hardly alone in exiting as a pariah— George W. Bush left the White House in January 2009 largely devoid of political capital in Washington. Only 34% of Americans supported the president when he departed office, which was higher than at any point in the previous year.
During his eight-year term as commander in chief, Bush gained a reputation as an bad decision-maker. Most controversially, in response to the 9/11 attacks, he launched a war in Iraq based on false intelligence that the country was harboring weapons of mass destruction, leading to thousands of military and civilian deaths. He also oversaw a disastrous FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina, which was followed by a major economic recession. Additionally, he was accused of being a pawn of his vice president, Dick Cheney—his presidency was shadowed by the perception that he was not fully in command of his own administration. Critics saw Cheney as the true architect of policy, particularly in shaping the post-9/11 national security state and pushing for the Iraq War. Cheney certainly wielded influence that outstripped that of any modern vice president.
At shops, clocks were sold counting down the days until Bush left the White House, while bumper stickers reading “Bush Lied, Thousands Died” appeared on cars. Political cartoons depicted him as unintelligent and gullible, just a Texan yokel being puppeted by Cheney. The term “Bushism” was coined to describe his verbal gaffes. A 2006 Rolling Stone issue even asked a stunning question: Was Bush the worst president in history?
Yet in February 2010, just a year after his second term ended, a Minnesota roadside billboard became widely known for featuring a grinning Bush alongside the phrase: “Miss Me Yet?”
This isn’t uncommon.
Many recent presidents have been called the worst by their opponents. Part of this stems from Americans’ declining knowledge of civics, making it easier for leaders to be blamed for issues beyond their control, including economic and foreign policy matters. The rise of social media has fueled anti-incumbent bias, spreading criticism in unprecedentedly accessible ways. This includes false and misleading information, which has damaged presidents’ reputations. A deceptively edited clip of Joe Biden appearing frozen at a Juneteenth event racked up millions of views before fact-checkers could catch up. In another era, the false claim that Barack Obama was born in Kenya took years to gain traction; today, a single AI-generated deepfake can warp public perception in hours.
Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama were both wildly popular leaders—each at times achieving approval ratings near 80% and winning landslide elections—while also being respected by historians. In historical rankings, Reagan was named the ninth-best president and Obama the tenth. Yet both still faced accusations of being the worst by their critics.
Reagan’s revolution brought real upheavals. His administration was riddled with corruption cases involving key officials (though none directly implicated him), and his supply-side economic policies delivered short-term prosperity at the cost of long-term imbalances.
Obama’s tenure was largely free of personal scandal, which only frustrated his fiercest critics, who instead branded him a socialist and accused him of treason.
Both leaders governed during times of rising polarization, where political parties became increasingly tribal, and opponents often exaggerated their shortcomings. Obama especially faced hostility amid the Great Recession and its economic fallout and the lingering effects of the Iraq War.
This trend of revising presidential reputations is evident today. When Donald Trump took office in 2017, 61% of Americans viewed Bush more favorably, including 54% of Democrats—a nearly 30-point jump from 2009. The same phenomenon occurred during Trump’s 2024 re-election, when his approval rating rebounded from 34% to nearly 50% as dissatisfaction with Biden grew. Experts described a “Trump amnesia” among voters, in which frustration with Biden’s handling of the economy, immigration and foreign policy—along with concerns over his age—caused many to overlook Trump’s most divisive moments.
Bill Clinton is an exception. When he left office in 2001 with a booming economy, 66% of Americans approved of his presidency—an astonishing number for a leader who had been impeached just two years earlier. However, in the post-#MeToo era, Clinton’s legacy has been reassessed, particularly regarding allegations of sexual misconduct and his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
We keep making the same mistake. We forget these presidents are not omnipotent overlords but flawed human beings in charge of an unwieldy superpower. Democracy was never meant to rest on trusting a single person for all solutions. Our system, for better or worse, is designed to function in messy collaboration.
Biden’s post-White House unpopularity is just the newest chapter in the paradox of American politics: we demand miracles, get mediocrity, and then grow nostalgic for the last occupant once we see the next set of problems. Until we learn to judge presidents in a more measured way—beyond shareable “gotcha” clips—we’re destined for this cycle to spin ever faster. “Worst president in history!” is a headline that finds its mark every four or eight years, until the moment we catch ourselves thinking: actually, maybe they weren’t so awful after all.
