Ongoing Pandemic, Rising Inflation Cap Tumultuous 2021 for Biden

President Joe Biden's first year in office saw accomplished agenda items, as well as multiple crises

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the October jobs reports in the State Dining Room at the White House on Nov. 5, 2021. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

President Joe Biden entered the White House amid one of the most challenging and tumultuous circumstances in recent history. As 2021 draws to a close, an assessment of the president’s tenure to date reveals a year with a number of agenda items accomplished along with multiple crises.

With roughly a month left until the first anniversary of his first term in the White House, the president’s approval rating has sunk amid a pandemic that has killed more Americans during his term than during that of his predecessor, an unprecedented surge in illegal immigration, rising inflation, and what has been widely perceived as a botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Fenced Off Inauguration

Biden was inaugurated as president of the United States on Jan. 20 while being guarded by thousands of troops. The rationale was that the thousands of Americans that had disrupted the election certification at the Capitol on Jan. 6 could return. Biden is the first president to have been guarded by the military from his own people during an inauguration.

Enshrining ‘Equity’

Biden has made “equity” into a “whole of government” issue, inserting the notion “throughout our federal policies and institutions.”