WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden promised nothing less than a national exorcism upon taking office. He wanted to “restore the soul of the country” and prove that Donald Trump was just a footnote in the American story, not the next chapter.
The tone was, “let’s try to get things back to normal as best we can,” said Sean Wilentz, a historian who met Biden twice at the White House.
It didn’t work that way. Despite exceeding expectations when it came to forging bipartisan deals and rallying foreign allies, Biden failed to turn the page on Trump. Four years after voters chose Biden over Trump, they chose Trump to replace Biden. It’s an unchangeable and crushing outcome for an aging politician in the final act of his long career, one that will likely become the prism for how Biden is viewed throughout history.
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“The fact is that there was no end to the abnormality,” said Wilentz, a professor at Princeton University. “He may not have appreciated what he was dealing with.”
Biden will give his own vision of how he wants to be remembered in the Oval Office on Wednesday evening, when he will deliver a farewell address. But Trump’s impending return underlines the limits of Biden’s ability to reshape the country’s trajectory as his celebrated predecessors were able to do. With the end of his only term just days away, it is unclear how Biden will reconcile his hopes for his presidency with the results.
The country is not waiting for his judgment. Only a quarter of Americans said Biden was a good or great president, according to the latest poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s lower than the twice-impeached Trump’s views when he left office shortly after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and during the deadly depths of the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden’s friends and supporters insist views will change over time.
“We lost a close election on closely contested, hard-fought issues, but that doesn’t mean what we did and how we did it didn’t help change the country for the better,” said longtime consultant Steve Ricchetti from Biden. who served as a White House adviser.
Ricchetti argued that Biden offered a model for repairing the damage caused by Trump, one that will carry another president over the finish line.
“There is no doubt that this is a strategy that will enable a successful presidency in the future,” he stressed.
Trump will take office on Monday promising an even more aggressive effort to reform the country than his turbulent first term. His comeback raises questions — even among Biden loyalists — whether the outgoing president was just a fleeting memory of a fading political era.
“Which is the deviation, Biden or Trump?” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Biden’s home state of Delaware. “Has the United States moved permanently in a populist and right-wing direction, and Biden was just a temporary respite?”
Coons isn’t sure yet.
“I think it’s an open question,” he said.
Biden evolved from a young upstart to an aging leader
For better or for worse, the arc of Biden’s political career is intertwined with his age. He became the youngest senator in American history when he took office in 1973 at the age of 30, the bare constitutional minimum.
He ran for president twice, but fell short both times, before becoming Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008.
At that point, Biden was a Washington veteran. David Axelrod, a longtime adviser to Obama, said one of the advantages of choosing Biden was how old he was. Biden would have been 74 when Obama left office – too old to become president for a third time, they assumed.
“You want your vice president to focus on the task at hand, not plan eight years ahead for his own candidacies,” Axelrod said.
What happened next is a central part of Biden’s political mythos. Mourning the death of his eldest son from cancer, Biden thought he was done with politics — until Trump’s 2017 comments about “very fine people, on both sides” of racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, prompted him to reconsider to flee.
Biden overcame doubters who believed he was past his prime, seizing the Democratic nomination as the political moment that aligned with his message. He showed empathy while Trump seemed callous about the COVID-19 pandemic, promising competence instead of chaos.
When Biden took office, he hung a portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt above the fireplace in the Oval Office. It was an unmistakable signal that he wanted to be a transformative figure, not a transitional figure.
Biden signed legislation that provides massive investments in infrastructure, clean energy and computer chip manufacturing, as well as a massive economic stimulus to fuel the country’s recovery from the pandemic. He also capped the cost of prescription drugs and introduced stricter rules on gun purchases.
“There were powerful entities that the Democratic Party failed to confront,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat. “And Biden beat them all.”
But he fell short of his ambitions to expand social services, including lowering child care costs and supporting programs to reduce child poverty, while a generational wave of inflation led to political backlash and questions about the wisdom of some of his expenses.
More challenges arose abroad. After botching the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden rallied Western support for Ukraine to prevent Russian domination. He also stood firmly by Israel after Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, disappointing some Democrats who wanted to see more efforts to protect Palestinian civilians.
Biden’s bid to hold on to the presidency failed, paving the way for Trump
Despite Biden’s performance, voters were concerned about other issues. They became frustrated with rising costs that were eating into their wages. And they were concerned about illegal migration at the southern border.
As the problems continued, Trump gained momentum and Biden struggled.
“Biden was very interested in becoming a historic president,” Axelrod said. ‘That was a kind of obsession. So he found it difficult to acknowledge mistakes or failures.’
After a lifetime of seeking the presidency, Biden had no interest in giving it up. He announced his re-election campaign even though he would be 86 years old at the end of his second term. The decision created a new parallel with Roosevelt, although not one that Biden would have wanted.
Roosevelt sought a fourth term in 1944 despite his poor health, believing he was indispensable while World War II was still ongoing. He died months after winning his last election.
Biden ran for re-election, brushing aside Americans’ fears that he was too old for the job. He had defeated Trump before and Biden insisted he was capable of doing so.
But he was forced to drop out of the race over the summer after stumbling through a debate against Trump. His actions sparked a crisis of confidence in a party united by its shared desire to block Trump’s return. The damage continued even after Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor. She lost.
Two days after the election, Biden addressed the nation from the Rose Garden, where he spoke of his “historic presidency” and shared an optimistic message about the future.
“The American experiment continues and we will be fine, but we must stay engaged,” he said. “We have to keep going. And above all, we must keep the faith.”
Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, compared Biden to former Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson, who were also unpopular when they left office.
“They governed at a very challenging time for the country and the world, but they did great things to put the country on a path to the future and tackle a number of important challenges,” he said.
On Friday, a reporter asked Biden if he regretted running for re-election and whether his decision paved the way for Trump’s resurgence.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
Biden even claimed he could have won if he had stayed in the race.
