Joe Biden, a good, decent man and a bulwark for liberal democracy, deserved better. From his first wife and daughter being killed in a car accident to his adult kid Beau dying of cancer to Hunter’s drug-driven run-ins with the law to his timing as a president who looked and acted like a man past his prime.
He wanted to “restore the soul of America.” Instead, he ironically enabled the comeback chances of the soulless Trump, the uninformed, authoritarian, nativist, misogynist grifter.
Biden championed the economy-mitigating, COVID-context $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, the $1 trillion Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act and the $800 million Inflation reduction Act. He worked well with allies and revived NATO. GDP remains strong, unemployment is at a half-century low and inflation has gone from 9.1% in 2022 to 2.4% in September. It wasn’t, however, enough in an era of bumper-sticker ideology, MAGA magnetism and prices that nobody likes.
Biden was an influential senator for 36 years and a vice president for eight years. He wasn’t divisive. He knew the players—both domestic and international.
But a key turning point was 2016, when President Barack Obama backed Hillary Clinton—not VP Biden—as the Democrats’ next-up presidential nominee. While it’s true that empathy over the impact of Beau’s death played a role in Obama’s decision, the result was a mismanaged-and-James Comey-impacted campaign. It hurts to lose a win-able race on unforced errors.
When Biden took over in 2020, his prime, if not memories of his interactions with Anita Hill, was behind him. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was humiliating, optics from the border were unsettling and periodic, awkward lapses were embarrassing—ending with his regrettably lame debate performance and withdrawal from the race. And then the Hunter Biden pardon, which for all the understandable father-son empathy, hardly helped the Joe Biden image. “The most tragic figure in American politics in my lifetime,” underscored Democratic strategist James Carville.
Joe Biden’s legacy? He was well qualified and well regarded until he passed his prime. That’s like a lot of us. Only we’ve never been president.