I’ve lost count of how often (and how far) the bar has been lowered for the current Oval Office occupant, and I don’t have the many hours it would take to list all the various ways it’s been done over the last 11 months.

One way that does come to mind, though, is how at the beginning we were treated to endless “reports” and various commentaries from The Usual Suspects on how President Biden was supposedly going to be ushering in a “refreshing” respect between the White House and the establishment press corps after four years of the highly contentious relationship between then-President Trump and members of the mainstream media.

When it became clear not long after Biden was sworn in that the promises he made regarding honoring the freedom of the press were a bunch of malarkey, the gears shifted. First, there appeared to be genuine frustration among journalists. But though there are still some grumblings, it’s gotten to the point where reporters have seemingly just given up, and are now simply characterizing days where Biden doesn’t address them as “press-free” days. Some news outlets have even started describing what Biden is doing as merely part of a “low-key media strategy.”

But most recently, we’ve stumbled upon what may be the lowest bar drop on behalf of the Biden administration to date. Former Obama-Biden team member Steve Rattner, an economic analyst on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program who in 2009 was the head of the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, weighed in yesterday, suggesting that though Biden’s numbers have tanked here at home, at least his “leadership” has restored “foreign sentiment towards the US”:

.@JoeBiden’s poll numbers may have dipped domestically, but happily, foreign sentiment towards the US has rebounded sharply under his leadership. cc: @MorningConsult pic.twitter.com/1dwDW2nFdj

— Steven Rattner (@SteveRattner) December 7, 2021

Seriously? Like, is there any more of an irrelevant factoid about a president than how he’s done in terms of allegedly getting other countries to view us more favorably? If there is, I can’t think of it.

Unfortunately, this is a very common sentiment I have seen expressed by the left in the past. Happened when Obama was elected. They were ecstatic about how our standing in the world was supposedly going to be “restored” or whatever. It’s a terrible metric to judge a president by, but this IS the left we’re talking about here.

As a side note, were Afghans surveyed for this poll? I suspect they’d take a far different view of the United States right about now than the other countries seemingly have.

In any event, you know things have gotten bad for Joe Biden when his prominent supporters are reduced to pointing out meaningless statistics on what other countries think of ours. I mean it’s like they’re saying, “Hey, the people Biden is supposed to be representing can’t stand him, but at least people in foreign countries think he’s the bee’s knees.”

Yawn. Get back to me when these same countries fear us enough to respect our strength and power, something that usually happens only when Republicans presidents are at the helm. With any luck at all, we’ll see exactly that in 2024. Until then…

Flashback: The Most Shameful and Sobering Commentary of All on Joe Biden Has Just Revealed Itself