Joe Biden’s presidency will be remembered as one that did not match the times, and a leader who failed to realise it

Should a US president by judged by what they achieved, or by what they failed to do?

Joe Biden’s administration is over. Though we have an extensive record, it is difficult to assess his presidency. At its outset, Biden promised hope, a return to normalcy, to be a bridge between generations, to restore democracy.

Four years on, what remains?

The Democratic Party is in disarray, its next generation of leaders unclear. Donald Trump is returning to the White House, his myrmidons clutching an extensive plan for radically recasting the United States in their image. A staunchly conservative Supreme Court has reinterpreted the powers of the presidency to expand their scope. Plutocrats are lining up to pay obeisance to the new administration, some openly speculating how to best slash the regulatory regime in their favour.

Already, Biden’s legacy seems tenuous, under threat.

Biden has been a president conscious of US presidential history, almost to the point of obsession. He did not just honour that history, but sought to stake a claim to his own place within it.

But now all that is at risk of being lost. Biden’s threatens to be a disappearing presidency, reduced to an ellipsis between the two Trump administrations, judged solely by its tragic end.

Biden himself has been reduced to an isolated and embittered old man, desperate still to serve even though the times have passed him by. His vision of America is one that no longer exists, if it ever did.

Biden’s contribution – early successes

The popular consensus is that Biden’s presidency is one of two halves.

From the period of his inauguration to the 2022 midterms, Biden accrued a substantial governing record. If his domestic accomplishments fell short of proclaimed ambitions, there was still significant progress.

Even where Biden was stymied, he could point to the normal resumption of the legislative process, the negotiation between the separate arms of government – a return to business as usual. But such confidence in the state of American democracy proved misplaced, and Biden’s reluctance to use the full power of the presidency to sway members of his own party attracted derision.

In its first half, the Biden administration successfully navigated an effective response to the COVID pandemic. It oversaw the passing of the most significant climate legislation in US history. The US$1.2 trillion (A$1.94 trillion) Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act delivered, and continues to deliver, significant material improvements to Americans’ lives.

It was not all plain sailing, of course. The chaos and confusion of the withdrawal from Afghanistan rightly drew criticism – especially the deaths of 13 US service members. While the withdrawal itself was the right decision, Biden is linked to the end of a war that dragged on for two decades, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and more than $2 trillion. It was a war that resulted, in the end, with the Taliban replacing the Taliban.

As the mid-terms approached in 2022, Biden’s presidency already seemed tenuous. Russia had invaded Ukraine in February of that year. The administration’s support for Ukraine was denied bipartisanship by MAGA radicals in Congress. The economic reverberations were significant, boosting the inflationary pressures that had already built up in the global financial system.

Predictions of a Republican “red wave” at the mid-terms were widespread. Many within the president’s party urged him to shift the messaging to core issues of inflation and economic management, in place of the less tangible emphasis on protecting democracy that Biden insisted on.

Then, in June of that year, the conservative Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. This was a national repudiation of established abortion rights, necessitating a national response. Democrats sought to place abortion on the ballot, and though Biden was an awkward proponent of the pro-choice cause (at best), his emphasis on not repudiating established norms allowed him to present his administration as a protector of the Roe v. Wade consensus.

Once mid-term voting was complete, despite Republican gains, it was clear the anticipated red wave had not eventuated. This was read as a political victory for Biden, not just against the Republicans, but also against detractors in his own party. The President’s confidence grew, as did his own conviction in his insoluble bond with the American people.

It was the pride before the fall.

Overwhelmed by circumstance

The period from 2022–24 has proved to be one of the most difficult in history for incumbent governments across the world. The reasons for this global turmoil are not hard to identify.

The cost-of-living crisis of the past two years has stripped governments of support and authority. Economic analyses of the scale and scope of this experience have often neglected to note that the inflationary surge and rising prices have bitten so deep because they come on top of established economic hardship for wide swathes of the population.

To give him credit, Biden had long identified this trend. He was deeply concerned with the erosion of the middle class, and the need to rebuild economic security for this social layer was long at the core of his economic plans. Biden conceived this as a moral imperative for his presidency.

There is debate over whether Biden’s economic program, awkwardly dubbed “Bidenomics”, was ever suited to this task.

Despite the administration’s attempts to point out that economic figures were improving, large swathes of Americans repeatedly reported to pollsters that their lives were not better than they were when Biden took office. Considering that the US, like the rest of the world, was then gripped by a pandemic, this was a remarkable statement.

Large increases in migration numbers created an opening for the MAGA right to blame economic woes on those seeking a better life in the US. Biden and the Democrats sought to show toughness with legal restraint, alienating both left-wing supporters and right-wing detractors for whom no effort by a Democratic administration would ever be enough.

The same dynamics played out in Biden’s foreign policy. His administration provided just enough support to Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion, but with constant concern about “escalation”, criticism came that it was not enough to seriously dent Russia’s military capability. Over time aid increased, but the lingering sense remained that the administration’s response was too little, too late. Biden was accused from different quarters of doing both too little and too much to aid Ukraine’s defence.

In the Middle East, after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 2023, the administration declared full support for Israel, its historic ally. In this, Biden articulated the long-held position of the US foreign policy establishment.

As time progressed, accusations that the Netanyahu government was inflicting collective punishment on Gaza and its civilian population intensified. Biden sought to restrain Netanyahu’s actions, but within the bounds of ongoing and longstanding US support for Israel (including military support). On the Republican right, Biden was accused of failing to provide the support Israel required. On swathes of the left, Biden was accused of abetting Netanyahu’s administration in perpetuating war crimes.

Biden’s foreign policy increasingly looked out of step with the times, and dramatically alienated some of the core base of the Democratic Party. The world was growing more polarised; the liberal international order was fraying, if not snapped entirely. Biden’s pleas for others to respect the US’s moral leadership and to return to historic ties of fraternity did not match new and more aggressive geopolitical realities, nor the changed character of the US’s role in the world.

Trump has been quick to claim credit for the tenuous ceasefire agreement thrashed out in the final days of the Biden administration. It remains to be seen whether it will hold. And like much of Biden’s presidency, it is already being cast as too little, too late.

The state of the leaving

Biden’s decision to debate Trump early in 2024 to cement his position as the Democratic nominee for that year’s election will be derided for decades to come as one of the worst campaign decisions in US presidential history.

Biden’s languid showing spooked supporters and emboldened those who already believed the president was simply too old to defeat Trump at the polls and serve a further four years.

The president, though, sought to defy time and age, further entrenching the notion he was disconnected from reality. His 2020 promise to be a “bridge” between generations was hazy at best, but has rightly come back to be used against him.

Did his refusal to earlier confirm that his presidency would be one term affect the 2024 election result? It is impossible to tell. But Biden’s intransigence and refusal to confront the realities of time and age will be cast deep into his legacy.

Depending on how the next few years pan out, it may well be seen as his most significant contribution to US history.

What’s left behind?

Biden’s greatest ambition was to return to a state of “normalcy” that no longer existed – if it ever did.

His ambition was, in many respects, admirable – a desire to rebuild the economic base of the previous democratic order. A time when the US economy led the world (not just its tech sector) and the country built things that could be used. When secure and long-term jobs were easy to find and paid enough for people to live on in some comfort and security.

While this misty nostalgia often obscured the complicated realities of the past (and its exclusions), it was a clear and progressive aim to provide economic security to rebuild US social and democratic life.

The simple fact is that achieving this goal would require overturning long-held orthodoxies on the relative role of the market and the state in US economic and political life. In a time of economic and geopolitical stability, this would be an historic and difficult task. In our current moment, perhaps impossible.

It is easy to personalise the failings of the past four years in the person of the president. For many Americans, that is what the presidency is for. And Biden’s legacy will always be inflected with these failings.

But the state of the union is not due to the president alone.

It is the result of the cynical cultivation of racist and reactionary mobilisation by the Republican party, a process that has culminated in the person of Trump but that had proceeded for many decades prior.

It is the result of the Democratic Party’s allegiance to the established order and its processes, even when it was no longer delivering for those who most need its protection.

And it is also the failings of a president of great ambition, determined to mark his own place in history, who was too late to realise his own time had passed.