Biden’s legacy: far-reaching achievements that failed to generate political support

But over the next two years, the trust Biden hoped to inspire steadily eroded. And when the 81-year-old Democratic president showed his age in a disastrous June debate against Trump, he lost the benefit of the doubt, too. That set off a chain of events that led him on Sunday to resign as his party’s nominee for the November election.

Democrats, united in their determination to prevent another Trump term, suddenly found themselves divided. And Republicans, beset by chaos in Congress and the former president’s criminal conviction, improbably united in proud unity.

Biden has never understood how to inspire the most powerful country in the world to believe in itself, let alone in him.

He lost the confidence of his supporters in the 90-minute debate with Trump, even though pride initially prompted him to ignore the fears of lawmakers, party elders and donors who urged him to drop out. Then Trump survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and, as if on cue, raised his fist in the air. Biden tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday while campaigning in Las Vegas and retreated to his beachside home in Delaware to recuperate.

The events over the course of three weeks led to an exit that Biden never wanted, but which Democrats felt was necessary to maximize their chances of victory in the November election.

Biden appears to have misjudged the breadth of his support. While many Democrats deeply admired the president personally, they did not have the same affection for him politically.

Douglas Brinkley, a historian at Rice University, said Biden was a welcome change in a country exhausted by Trump and the pandemic.

“He was the perfect person for that moment,” said Brinkley, who noted that in an era of polarization, Biden proved that bipartisan legislation was still possible.

Yet there was never a “Joe Biden Democrat” like there was a “Reagan Republican.” He had no adoring, movement-like following like Barack Obama or John F. Kennedy. He was no generational candidate like Bill Clinton. The only groundbreaking dimension of his election was that he was the oldest person ever elected president.

His first race for the White House, in the 1988 cycle, ended in self-inflicted plagiarism, and he failed to make it to the first nomination fight. In 2008, he dropped out after the Iowa caucuses, where he won less than 1% of the vote. In 2016, Obama advised his vice president not to run. A Biden victory in 2020 seemed unlikely, when he finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire before a dramatic surge in South Carolina that propelled him to the nomination and the White House.

David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Obama who also worked closely with Biden, said history would treat Biden more kindly than voters did, not only because of his legislative record but also because he defeated Trump in 2020.

“His legacy is more significant than any of his many accomplishments,” Axelrod said. “He will always be the man who stood up and defeated a president who put himself above our democracy.”

But Biden couldn’t escape his age. And when he showed weakness in his steps and his speeches, there was no base of supporters to rally behind him to stop calls to step aside.

It was a humbling end to a half-century career in politics, but it also didn’t really reflect the full legacy of his time in the White House.

In March 2021, Biden rolled out $1.9 trillion in pandemic relief, creating a raft of new programs that temporarily halved child poverty, halted evictions and helped add 15.7 million jobs. But inflation began to rise shortly thereafter, as Biden’s approval rating, as measured by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, fell to 39% from 61% in June.

He then implemented a series of executive actions to untangle global supply chains and passed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package that not only replaced aging infrastructure, but also improved internet access and prepared communities to withstand the damage of climate change.

In 2022, Biden and his party colleagues followed the Democrats with two measures that breathed new life into the future of American manufacturing.

The CHIPS and Science Act provided $52 billion to build factories and establish institutions to make computer chips domestically, giving the U.S. access to the most advanced semiconductors needed to fuel economic growth and maintain national security. There was also the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided incentives to divest from fossil fuels and allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

Biden also sought to compete more aggressively with China, rebuild alliances like NATO and complete the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which resulted in the deaths of 13 American service members.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 exacerbated inflation as Trump and other Republicans questioned the value of military aid to Ukrainians. Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel sparked a war that exposed divisions within the Democratic Party over whether the United States should continue supporting Israel, while tens of thousands of Palestinians died in months of counterattacks.

Yet it was the scale of the stakes and fear of Biden’s loss that tipped the scales, leading Democrats to assume that the tasks he had begun could best be accomplished by a younger generation.

“History will be kinder to him than the voters were at the end,” Axelrod said.

Josh Boak, The Associated Press