Historian and journalist Conrad Black is an astute observer in real time of how history will judge presidents. History, he says, will judge Joe Biden as “a total failure.” It begins with the economy:

The shortfall of 500,000 in the expected net new job figures for August shows that stagflation is upon us: employers are afraid to hire employees as they normally would coming out of the COVID recession because they don’t know if they will be able to afford them. Hourly pay scales are increasing at 7.5 percent, new car prices at 10 percent, rental accommodation at 12 percent, and new homes at 20 percent, all well ahead of the official rate of inflation, contrary to the smug assurances of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and even some Federal Reserve spokespeople, that inflation was a mere bubble.

Historically, the only sustainable way of fighting stagflation has been to counter inflation with increased supply and achieve that goal and the corresponding non-inflationary increase in demand through the encouragement of demand in the tax system. The present administration is committed to raising taxes and to colossal spending increases, which will exacerbate both stagnation and inflation.

After 13 years of negligible interest rates, there isn’t much that’s useful left in the toolbox. The inflation of the sort that is already building up historically has been attacked by reducing demand and sharply increasing interest rates. Any such policy now would produce a disaster that would be a fiscal and monetary replication of the debacle in Afghanistan. Not since Herbert Hoover prescribed higher taxes, higher tariffs, and a shrinkage of the money supply as the remedy for the Great Depression has an American administration more poorly judged the policy prescriptions necessary to fight deteriorating economic conditions.

Biden’s failure continues to crime, which he wants to address by “the suppression of access to guns for responsible citizens.” It’s painfully evident on the southern border, which over Biden’s first six months “saw 1.2 million people swarm illegally into the United States.” Then came a big one:

As the smoke clears from above the disaster in Afghanistan, it is possible to assess the administration’s performance dispassionately: the president lied to the country about conditions in Afghanistan and in the infamous July 23 conversation with Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, he urged a policy of misinformation to conceal the erosion of the military balance from the American public. He promised to extract all Americans and failed to do so. He said the war was over; it is a war on terror and of course it is not over and may now be expected to escalate. He falsely attempted to blame former Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump, who all have some mistakes to answer for but are in no way responsible for this debacle.

As with all Democrats, Biden has what Black calls “the Democratic media” to cover for his sins and propagandize his goals, though that won’t be enough for history. Nor even for the present:

The one great achievement of the Biden Administration is, like the rest of its record, disintegrating: it was supposed to be a time of calm and professionalism; the return of the adults, the return of normalcy. This cascade of fiascos is not normalcy — is far from what was promised, and is not, as the crashing opinion polls demonstrate, acceptable. …

America is having and executing a time of increasing unease over bad policy failings in every important field, ostensibly presided over by an opinionated but incoherent man approaching the last extremity of cognition adequate to hold such a great office. It cannot go on like this and it won’t.

Joe Biden is not up to the job.

Read the whole thing here.