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The tragic end of the Biden presidency

Jan 20, 2025 07:58 PM IST

Joe Biden’s exemplary public life deserves appreciation but it also serves as a warning; if you are a politician and don’t know when to leave, history will be brutal and unkind

Washington: All political lives end in tragedy. Think about Joe Biden. A boy born with a stutter, Biden was the youngest Senator who just met the minimum age threshold of 30 before taking oath back in 1972. He was the epitome of personal courage and sacrifice who lost his wife and daughter in an accident, at the same time as his Senate win, and took the Amtrak everyday from DC to Wilmington to be with his two young sons. He was the upright young politician who became the first senator outside Georgia to endorse Jimmy Carter for president. He rose up the ranks of the judiciary and foreign relations committees in the Senate. He flirted with a presidential run in 1988, but had to withdraw because of charges of plagiarising a speech, a turn of fate that turned out to be a blessing because he had to undergo a brain aneurism surgery right after.

The Biden legacy is now of making way for his predecessor as successor. (AFP)
The Biden legacy is now of making way for his predecessor as successor. (AFP)

Twenty years later, in 2008, Biden threw his hat in the presidential ring again, only to see his candidacy collapse as a prodigious political talent rose in the form of Barack Obama. But Obama needed a Washington veteran with relationships on the Hill, and Biden stepped in as his running mate and then Vice President for eight long years. Biden lost his son, Beau, to cancer, and it appeared he won’t attempt a presidential run again. Obama, perhaps as a part of a prior understanding, backed Hillary Clinton as the party nominee. But Biden, it seems, had wanted to run, and never forgave Obama for passing him over. When Clinton lost to Trump, Biden felt even more vindicated, convinced he could have beaten the Republican nominee.

And then 2020 happened. Biden decided to contest in the most unusual of presidential races. He got the party nomination, largely due to the support of influential Black leaders, campaigned through Covid largely from home and virtually, and won. Trump refused to accept the results, and Biden had to take office with the task of rescuing American democracy, bringing back discipline to American government, overcoming the pandemic, saving the economy, competing with China, managing revolutionary technological breakthroughs, and dealing with other global crises.

And what a fine job he did for his country. Biden’s stimulus helped save millions from economic distress. His infrastructure plan inaugurated a chapter of rebuilding American public works and creating jobs. His vaccine push saw the country slowly heal from the pandemic. Following Trump’s lead, he embarked on an industrial policy focused on tech, manufacturing and boosting American competitiveness. He introduced a far more thoughtful and methodical approach to dealing with China, with both competitive actions and alliance building and engagement. He ensured that the American economy didn’t just not slide into recession but maintained robust growth and job creation figures. He took domestic action on climate in unprecedented ways. And he created the most diverse administration in American history.

Biden’s administration and policy had flaws and Trump had succeeded in making them the key themes of the election. This included the spike in illegal immigration, an issue that Democrats didn’t do enough to tackle for most of Biden’s presidency. Biden’s policies had inflationary consequences, and this, coupled with global uncertainty in supply chains, hurt consumers. Biden involved US in the war in the Ukraine, without adequately explaining to American people what was at stake; he backed Israel after October 7 attacks, without offering a compelling case, if at all there can be one, on what could justify killings and devastation of the scale witnessed in Gaza in which US was seen as complicit. Biden let cultural Left run with the political mandate to push American society in directions it wasn’t ready for at this stage.

All of this was a part of any administration’s strengths and weaknesses. But a fair evaluation of his term is not the luxury that history will afford Biden, for he let a fatal personal flaw, of ambition and a sense of his own indispensability and invincibility, ruin his legacy.

Biden was already the oldest man to become president and stay president. His decision to stand in the 2024 election meant that he would be 82 by the time he took office, and 86 by the time he ended his second term. Trump is only a few years younger but has a far more vigorous appearance. Biden’s real opportunity to leave in glory was after the 2022 midterms where he had delivered a better than expected performance for Democrats. But his decision to stick on, and the silence of the entire Democratic establishment in warning him and the public that the president may not be able to run again or be able enough to complete a second term, meant that till the presidential debate in June, Americans genuinely did not know how weak and frail, incoherent and inarticulate, Biden had actually got. And that was perhaps the moment they took a decision to opt for Biden’s rival.

It still took weeks to persuade Biden to withdraw. He then backed Kamala Harris as his successor, a logical choice but a choice that had not emerged from the primary process, leaving many disillusioned. She lost and the Biden legacy is now of making way for his predecessor as successor.

Biden ends his political life a bitter man, convinced he could have won, but for the betrayal of his friends and the public and the media. By any reading of the popular mood, that is somewhat delusional. He also ends his public life a compromised manic having pardoned his son despite promising not do so. He ends his international life a discredited and weak man, for having presided over the killings in Gaza, and someone who may have saved Ukraine but couldn’t bring peace to the land and didn’t have an endgame.

As he heads back home to his beloved Delaware, where it all began for him, Joe Biden’s exemplary public life deserves appreciation but it also serves as a warning; if you are a politician and don’t know when to leave, history will be brutal and unkind.

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