As Joe Biden prepares to leave office, Americans have a dimmer view of his presidency than they did at the end of Donald Trump’s first term or Barack Obama’s second, a new poll finds. Around one-quarter of U.S. adults said Biden was a “good” or “great” president, with less than 1 in 10 saying he was “great,” according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It’s a stark illustration of how tarnished Biden’s legacy has become, with many members of his own party seeing his Democratic presidency as merely mediocre. About one-third described Trump as “good” or “great” on the eve of the Republican’s departure from the White House in 2021, according to AP-NORC polling, including about 2 in 10 who said he was “great” — even after he helped sparked a deadly insurrection that saw a mob of his supporters overrun the U.S. Capitol. Americans were similarly likely to describe both Biden and Trump as “poor” or “terrible” — about half said this characterized each president’s time in office — but about 3 in 10 said Biden was “average,” while less than 2 in 10 said this about Trump. Biden’s standing is also much lower than the last outgoing Democratic president, Obama, who left office with about half of Americans describing his tenure as “good” or “great,” according to another AP-NORC poll. Those findings are consistent with data released this week by Gallup, which found Biden’s standing similar to that of President Richard Nixon after the Republican resigned during the Watergate scandal. The Gallup analysis found that other presidents who left with poor ratings — including Trump, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Jimmy Carter — saw views of their presidencies grow warmer with time. But for now, few seem impressed with Biden’s time in office, including a sizable chunk of Democrats. “I’m not going to sound like ‘Star Wars,’ that he went over to the dark side and everything that might be implied there,” John Cressey, a 79-year-old Democrat who lives in the Los Angeles area and does background work for films and movies, said of Biden. “But I think he just lost the pulse of the nation and that’s why Trump won.” Among supporters of Biden’s party, only about 1 in 10 described his presidency as “great,” while about 4 in 10 called it “good,” and a similar share described it as “average.” Cressey said he saw the 82-year-old Biden declining physically and believes the president was increasingly controlled by aides. He says Biden let the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border deteriorate into “a mess.” And Cressey summed up his chagrin with Biden’s handling of the economy by saying, “Go buy a carton of eggs.” Disappointment especially high among Black and Hispanic Americans Things weren’t always so bad for Biden. About 6 in 10 Americans approved of the way he handled the presidency as he took office, according to AP-NORC polling, but by early 2022, that had fallen to about 4 in 10, where views largely stayed for the remainder of his term. In the new poll, disappointment was especially palpable among Black and Hispanic Americans, who have traditionally leaned Democratic but shifted in larger numbers toward Trump in 2024. The contrast with Obama was especially striking among Black Americans. About 6 in 10 said Obama, the nation’s only Black president, had kept his promises at the end of his […]