I can’t wait to read a deeply-reported Bob Woodward-style account of the Biden presidency, revealing in detail how he accomplished what he did and how he failed where he did.
As he reaches the end of his four-year term, I don’t think he deserves the dismal 36 percent approval rating reported by CNN, and I’d bet, after a Woodwardesque reporting (and the passage of time), the public will judge him much more favorably.
I don’t agree with the Financial Times’ US editor, Edward Luce, who wrote last week that the bottom line of Biden’s legacy will be the return of Donald Trump—the product of Biden’s hubris in thinking for too long that he could defeat Trump despite only 27 percent of Americans believing he had the cognitive ability to be president again.
In an NBC interview this month, Biden said he still thinks he could have won, but he did say he doubted he could serve four more years.
I believe that history will recognize that Biden’s presidency was significant in many ways, but there’s no question that he should have stuck to his March 2020 assertion that he viewed himself as a “bridge” to a younger generation of Democratic leaders and “nothing else.”
Presumably Woodward (or perhaps Biden’s biographer, New Yorker writer Evan Osnos) will explain how he came to change his mind and kept to that stance even after his disastrous June 2024 debate with Trump and the month it took for him to withdraw from the race and anoint Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s candidate.
Had Biden announced in, say, mid- 2023 that he was not running, Democrats could have held a robust primary process that Harris might have won, but she would then have been better known to voters and a stronger candidate than she proved to be.
Or the party might have elevated other rising stars with even more political skills than Harris demonstrated — people like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
And one of them might have named Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as Veep, beginning to erase the handicap that homosexuals face running for high office. Woodward and/or Osnos might name names and get to the bottom of suspicions that Biden’s family and top aides conspired to conceal the toll that age was taking on him.
Those aren’t the only errors requiring full elucidation. There was Biden’s three-year failure to curtail illegal immigration, his excessive caution in giving Ukraine the weapons it needed to actually defeat Russia’s invasion, his overspending and under-managing his COVID rescue plan that contributed to the inflation that led to massive public dissatisfaction, and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that set his approval ratings on their downward plunge.
And don’t neglect his failure, despite good intentions and proposals, to prevent the income and wealth gaps in America from widening. The “oligarchy” that he warned against in his farewell address got stronger during his presidency, with top figures in the “tech industrial complex” that he also warned of leading the way: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Biden and Democrats in general also failed to communicate their accomplishments to the public and they failed to demonstrably fight back against “woke” hyper-progressives who sought to defund police departments, abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and were over-permissive in addressing trans-sexual issues.
All that said, Biden did record significant accomplishments and how he did so deserves in-depth reporting make possible the full story of his presidency.
As he recounted in his farewell address, he did respect and defend America’s democratic institutions now in danger from Trump and his MAGA movement. Biden observed that he’s honoring the principle of peacefully transferring power to a rival party, implicitly condemning Trump for his refusal to do so in 2024.
Biden did rescue the American economy after the COVID pandemic. He did rally the West to aid Ukraine when it was attacked by Russia and bolster Asian allies facing threats from an aggressive China.
He tried his best to operate on a bipartisan basis despite almost-automatic opposition from Republicans. He did succeed (where Trump failed) in passing a massive infrastructure bill that will create perhaps millions of jobs and repair the nation’s roads, bridges, and waterways and provide affordable high-speed internet service to practically the whole country.
He did keep the US a world leader in high tech by passing the CHIPS Act to bring manufacture of semiconductor chips back to this country, creating tens of thousands of jobs — and taking steps to bar China from obtaining militarily-useful technology. He lowered drug prices by finally giving Medicare the power to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies.
And he passed the first significant gun-safety legislation in decades, plus potentially the most significant climate legislation in history, cutting carbon pollution in half by 2030, tripling investment in battery production and already creating more than 270,000 clean-energy jobs, scheduled to rise to 1.3 million jobs by 2030.
In a CNN interview, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin observed that Harry Truman’s approval rating dropped to 22 percent in 1952, but he is now widely rated among the 10 top presidents. And Lyndon Johnson’s fell to 35 percent in 1968, but he’s now ranked in some polls as the 11th best president owing to his civil rights record and Great Society programs. She said that Biden might similarly rise in public esteem.
There’s one big caveat: Donald Trump will try to reverse most of Biden’s accomplishments, beginning with climate initiatives. If he goes through with mass deportation of illegal immigrants and imposes stiff tariffs on other countries, he will undo Biden’s progress on inflation.
He may also unravel America’s foreign alliances — for instance, by canceling US aid to Ukraine, sending US troops into Mexico to fight drug cartels, or pressing efforts to claim Canada, the Panama Canal, and Greenland.
And don’t forget the damage that Trump’s menagerie of appointees could cause. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may well set off new epidemics—or fail to stop the next pandemic. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy cannot possibly cut federal expenditures by $2 trillion without savaging domestic programs including Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps. Pete Hegseth is utterly unqualified to manage the Department of Defense, so he’ll be at the mercy of the wasteful military-industrial complex. And Trump’s pick for director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, sympathetic toward Vladimir Putin, is such a security risk that foreign governments will hesitate to share secrets with the US.
Trump’s intention to replace thousands of “deep state” federal officials with lackeys appointed on the basis of personal loyalty to the president is a recipe for runaway corruption.
Trump’s attorney general appointee, Pam Bondi, and his FBI director, Kash Patel, may tell Senators they don’t intend to investigate and bankrupt Trump adversaries, but they almost certainly will if they sense Trump wants them to. If any of this comes to pass, Trump’s approval ratings will crater. Biden’s reputation will suffer collateral damage for his having facilitated Trump’s return to power.
After more than 50 years in federal service, Biden is passing from the scene. But, as he said at the conclusion of his farewell address, if American institutions are to survive the next four years, “it’s your turn to stand guard” — meaning, it’s our responsibility to be keepers of the democratic flame and the faith.
Democrats, in particular, need to recover from their post-election torpor and vigorously fulfill their role as loyal opposition. There’ll be lots to oppose and lots to do to preserve Joe Biden’s achievements.
