The classic embodiment of chutzpah known by every lawyer on the planet is the teenager who murders his parents and then asks for leniency on the ground he's an orphan. GOP critics of President Joe Biden are starting to sound an awful lot like that teenager, leveling criticisms that are starting to sound every bit as laughable.

The characters who have denied COVID-19's existence, encouraged behavior that spread it, dissed public health advice, derided vaccinations and attempted to block vaccination programs have contributed to the virus' devastating impacts, making it more difficult to mitigate them. Asked in late January 2020 whether there was reason to worry about COVID-19, Mar-a-Lago's answer to Einstein replied, "No. Not at all. We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine."

Battling the Right's guerilla warfare against public health efforts, Biden's administration has succeeded in getting 210 million Americans fully vaccinated, and about 83 million of those boosted. Biden's critics, many of whom have done their best to impede this progress, gloat that Biden has not "managed" to prevent a virus from mutating, as though he were in a position to do so or they were in a position to speak.

For four years, then-President Donald Trump kissed parts of Russian President Vladimir Putin's anatomy that really should be off-limits, actively encouraging the former KGB agent to conclude that he could have his way with the United States, doing his best to weaken NATO. Trump humiliated Ukraine and withheld military aid that it desperately needed to defend itself against Russian aggression, all so that he could extort a phony announcement of a phony "investigation" into Biden and use it to win an election he knew he would otherwise lose.

Now, Trump stalwarts accuse Biden of being soft on Russia and weak on Ukraine.

When Biden took office, Trump's "there's no-virus-here" genius had tanked the American economy, leaving us in DEFCON 1. In Biden's first year 6.4 million jobs were added, more than in any president's first year. Unemployment that was at 6.3% when Trump slinked off to Florida was at 3.9% a year later. Average hourly pay was 4.7% higher at the end of 2021 than it had been when Trump left office. And even adjusted for inflation, Americans' disposable incomes were higher than they were in 2019 and 2020.

But Biden's critics claim that his economic policies have "failed."

The narrative peddled by some and swallowed whole by others that Biden's first year has been a failure defies the facts — but then, fact-defiance has become a thing.

Perhaps most amusing is the Republicans' line that Biden has "failed to unify" America. This is nothing if not rich coming from those who, all in lockstep, some in goosestep, have refused to join Biden's effort to make legislation aimed at healing an ailing country bipartisan. Having resolved to block the Biden administration at every turn, they charge him with failing to bring the nation together. Only the truly gullible would buy that flimflam, but we have a lot of those.

Despite it all, Biden managed within 60 days of becoming president to enact the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion relief package that helped keep state and local governments functioning, paid for a massive vaccination program that has saved uncountable American lives, kept millions of renters living under a roof and put food on the table for millions whose household earners were out of work and either on the ropes or not far from it.

He navigated into law a $1.2 trillion infrastructure and jobs package which, as the Brookings Institute put it, "touches every sector of infrastructure, from transportation and water to energy, broadband and the resilience and rehabilitation of our nation's natural resources." It is, says Brookings, "a longer-term patient approach to rebuilding American competitiveness."

Not bad for 12 months on the job. It ought to make Americans pause, think, reject the chutzpah and give credit where credit is due.

Jeff Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

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