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Joe Biden's Legacy

Writer's picture: Will AllenWill Allen

Updated: 2 days ago


Illustration by Will Allen


Politicians are complicated creatures at the best of times. No leader is perfect, so often they fall far short of the ideals and visions they championed before ascending to power. Joe Biden is no exception to this rule. In fact, Biden embodies this rule more than any other American leader in recent history. He served only one term, which was in many ways profoundly radical. He championed and passed a host of deeply progressive legislation that transformed the country. Yet, as is so often the case, his term was also littered with failures, failures that were a specific byproduct of Biden’s worldview, which straddled two completely different eras. 


For much of his career, Joe Biden has often been the right politician at the wrong moment. At the beginning of his career, he was too young for the job; by the end at 81 he was far too old, cast aside by his party for a younger nominee. At other times, when the perfect moment arose for his national ambitions, circumstances ran against him. As Obama’s second term drew to a close, he lost his son and then the Democratic Party’s blessing to run for president. 


In 2020, after decades of seeking the presidency, Biden finally clinched it. It was a strange moment, however. America was in the throes of a global pandemic, and Biden’s Republican opponent refused to concede the election, derailing the traditional coronation that comes with ascending America’s highest office. Still, Biden’s victory was a watershed moment. He realigned the Democratic coalition, captured a Democratic trifecta on Capitol Hill, and shifted the country leftward. 


This is where Biden’s legacy begins. 


Much of Biden’s record is apparent in the legislation and vision that emerged from the halcyon days of the Democratic trifecta that Biden had at his disposal early in his term. With a united government, Biden radically transformed America’s economic orthodoxy during that time. He sought to wield the federal government as an instrument of economic revitalisation, delivering two landmark reconciliation packages – the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act – which transformed the economy and society in ways the government rarely has in recent decades. He doubled down and drove huge leaps in investment and infrastructure, science and innovation. This tranche of legislation touched on long-held dreams of the Democratic Party – making prescription drugs affordable, slashing child poverty to record lows, supercharging the clean energy transition, and revitalising the nation’s ailing infrastructure.


Illustration by Will Allen


Nowhere is the radical version of Joe Biden clearer than at the FTC, where he installed Lina Khan. Like Biden, she believed the federal government was a tool, one that could be swung around with force to recalibrate the economic order in favour of the average American. Khan and the FTC radically diverged from the stale orthodoxy of the past and centred their work on diluting dangerous economic power. They went to war with tech giants, meat monopolies, and anticompetitive practices that have for so long concentrated economic power at the top, and left the rest of America behind. Khan and her beliefs encapsulate just how radical Joe Biden could be as President. It often gave the impression that he was anything but a creature of Washington orthodoxy, and allowed him to achieve so much as President. 


Still, for much of his time in office, Joe Biden was often not very radical at all. He worked in service of institutions which so often sought to frustrate him. Part of this mindset was simply because Biden, as a president, was a hostage to his circumstances. For much of his term, he was held hostage by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate, and later a Republican majority in the House, two entities he couldn’t hope to control. Biden’s radicalism is sometimes all the more staggering, considering he had to battle Manchin and Sinema to pass his agenda.


Yet, all too often, an apathy for radicalism emanated from a belief in Biden that individuals and institutions in Washington would eventually knuckle down and do the right thing if they saw him compromise, they never did. This standpoint – where Biden gave up ground to try and show his opposition that he was willing to meet them halfway – left Biden a constant slave to those who simply refused to play by the rules and endlessly destroyed his vision for America. Together with his tendencies for quiet technocratic governance, it quickly became his undoing. 


The Supreme Court is the sorest example of Biden’s moderate mindset. Time and time again, he refused to battle an institution hellbent on undoing his policy goals in a brutal partisan fashion. He failed to realise the political moment – and capital – in his grasp throughout his term and lost a moment in which serious institutional realignment was plausible. This hesitation was also apparent in his defence of abortion rights, where he often seemed unable to muster a full-throated defence for such a fundamental right, ultimately leaving it to Vice President Harris to defend a woman’s right to exercise bodily autonomy. When he eventually joined the fray, Biden confined himself to restoring Roe and the imperfect status quo of the past. 


There were other notable misses for Biden; nowhere is this clearer than in foreign policy. Biden ran on a platform to recast American foreign policy in his image. Early on, the so-called ‘Biden Doctrine’ suggested America would be more attuned to the sensitivities of a changing world order in which international institutions and values were critical. Yet, Biden’s actual foreign policy represented nothing of its vision. There were major blunders in Afghanistan and hollow overtures to democratic consolidation. He attempted to support Ukraine staunchly, but even that fell by the wayside when his party lost control of the House. 


No failure in foreign policy, however, is as calamitous as Biden’s inability to balance events in the Middle East. It is something that will haunt his record. His mix of inaction and unfettered support of Israel – as it decimated the rules-based order Biden had sworn to revitalise – dealt a hammer blow to the notion that Biden truly cared about an ethical foreign policy and the global institutions that uphold it. His position also sat juxtaposed to the deep empathy and understanding Biden so often conveyed in countless other areas of policymaking as president. In the end, foreign policy was an unmitigated disaster for Biden, and it was heartbreaking to witness.


Domestically, Biden did change more than just economic orthodoxy. His defence of democracy at home largely had a mixed record until the 2022 midterms, where he led his party to defy electoral odds, crushing a wave of anti-democracy candidates up and down the ballot. Few presidents since FDR have had more successful midterms. Biden also installed over 235 judges, including Ketanji Brown Jackson, to the Supreme Court, slowing (somewhat) the onslaught of conservative jurisprudence. He was the most pro-labour president ever, making history by joining a UWA picket. He championed equality and elevated qualified individuals to his cabinet who reflected America and its promise of an ever-more-perfect union. 


Yet, Joe Biden’s legacy – his vision for a new economic order, environmental progress, social justice, and whatever is left of it in the decades to come – will forever lie in the shadow of the man who will succeed him. Back in 2020, when he ran for the Democratic nomination he would eventually clinch, Biden stated he did so to consign Donald Trump to history, to make him an aberration in America’s long and storied history. But Biden leaves the office after failing to complete this most vital task. By the end of his term, this failure reflects that Biden was the wrong politician for such a crucial moment – a fateful 90-minute debate against Trump revealed this to everyone. Even when he stepped aside for the new generation of leadership he had promised in Kamala Harris, it was probably too late. Biden had condemned America to another Trump presidency. 


Illustration by Will Allen


By the end of his term, Biden had lost the argument and the fight for the soul of the nation. His own party had rejected him, and the nation repudiated his vision by reinstalling a man he loathed to the White House. It was a far cry from the triumphant rise of 2020 and once again rendered Biden an isolated figure in American politics. More tragically, in his final months as president, Biden became the epitome of the man he swore not to be. He pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, in an act of love that laid waste to his vision for good governance. Such a pardon and its implications overshadowed the other acts of clemency Biden bestowed. Alongside his son, Biden granted thousands of pardons and commutations to Americans, including sparing 37 individuals from the death penalty. However, America will only remember one of these acts of forgiveness. 


On the one hand, Biden was an exceptional president who unseated Donald Trump and reshaped the American economy like few other presidents have. His presidency brought relative calm after four chaotic years, a global pandemic, and an insurrection. At the same time, Biden was a president who often failed to meet the moment. So often, Biden clung to a vision of Washington that simply did not exist and acquiesced to institutions that endlessly frustrated his vision for no apparent reason. This mindset limited his response to critical events like the end of Roe, corruption in the Supreme Court, and the weakening of democracy, events where a sustained push for reforms was vital. His foreign policy also left a huge void at the heart of his administration – the ‘Biden doctrine’ failed, and the world fractured further.


Heartbreakingly, none of this debate matters much, not the economy, inflation, environmental progress, foreign policy, or how many judges Biden confirmed. All of Biden’s successes, mistakes, and the progress he forged will forever remain an afterthought. What will matter is that Biden was unable to play the long game and put his pride before the country for far too long. With this, President Biden cemented a legacy that will be remembered only in ‘what ifs’.




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