January 23, 2025
Inheriting a post-pandemic economy, Biden has orchestrated the best recovery in the industrial world.
With its inherent dyspeptic vitriol, Donald Trump despises Joe Biden as “the worst president in American history.” Historian Robert McElwain greets him as “a great president,” claiming that his accomplishments rival those of “both Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, two of the most effective presidents of the 20th century,” and since Biden did not enjoy the congressional majorities of those giants, he had to, “as was said of Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire could do backwards and in high heels.”
All that is clear is that after four contentious years, Biden is leaving Washington as a remarkably consistent one-term president.
He achieved the greatest success in domestic politics. Inheriting an economy stalled by the pandemic, Biden has orchestrated the industrial world’s best recovery, leaving his successor with low unemployment and low inflation, “an economy that’s about as good as it’s ever been,” in his words Mark Zandichief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
It wasn’t just luck. Ron KleinBiden’s first chief of staff, noted that Biden introduced “the largest economic recovery plan since Roosevelt, the largest infrastructure plan since Eisenhower, the most judges confirmed since Kennedy, the second largest health care bill since Johnson, and the largest bill in history on climate change.”
By supporting Trump’s tariffs and combining them with a new industrial policy focused on alternative energy and high-tech investment, Biden has consolidated bipartisan support for a break with the market fundamentalism that has ruled US politics since Ronald Reagan. He also restored antitrust and smart regulation — putting limits on theft by prescription drug companies while cracking down on new monopolies.
surprisingly Democrats— and Kamala Harris in particular — paid a heavy political price for Biden’s domestic policy restrictions. Trump rightly attributed his landslide victory to “food and the border” — inflation fueled by a pandemic that hit working families hard and an influx of immigrants that gave Trump a racially charged cudgel against the administration.
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Perhaps more telling was that Biden’s achievements were fleeting. Measures in the Recovery Act, in particular extended tax credit for children – in a year or two. I had a tax credit reducing child poverty by about 40 percent, which rose immediately after its repeal. Voters felt little impact from investments in infrastructure and climate that took a long time to roll out. And the limits of a one-term president are especially evident as Trump vows to undo as many of Biden’s accomplishments as he can.
The biggest failures of the Biden presidency occurred in foreign policy. His promise of dramatic change — a “foreign policy for the middle class” — proved to be empty rhetoric beyond a change in trade policy. Biden declared that “America is back,” asserting that the U.S. is an “indispensable nation,” and continued to act as if America remained the unipolar power of the past three decades. He has stood up to Russia in Ukraine, China in the South China Sea, Iran in the Middle East, and supported a misguided war on terror around the world. He sought to enlist allies to offset the apparent limitations of US power and resources, while calling the world to a quixotic global struggle of democracy against autocracy.
He assumed that the world no longer existed – and the result was disastrous. Reluctance to negotiate with Russia over Ukraine sparked an invasion that will leave the country broken and in ruins. He was dismissive of renewing the Iran nuclear deal. His support of Israel in its genocidal attack on Gaza violated US law and lied to all US talk of a “rules-based order”. Biden was ridiculously supportive economic sanctions to a third of the world’s countries, including 60 percent of developing countries. Defining threats in military terms, his military budget has reached $1 trillion a year, under-resourced for real security threats like pandemics and climate change.
As he left office, Biden declared that America was stronger because of his efforts and that our adversaries were weaker. In fact, there are conflict zones all over the world increased by two thirds for the last three years. His support for Israel made America more isolated and despised. He has prepared the country for a military conflict with China in the South China Sea that it cannot win. And the core foreign policy vision for the middle class — that we would hold back on military adventures abroad to focus on rebuilding the country at home — was lost in the wave. To our eternal shame, Guantanamo prison remains open and embargo on Cuba remains in place. In his finale speech At the State Department, Biden urged Trump to face the reality that climate change is “the greatest threat to humanity.” But from the United States peak oiland the military consumes twice as much money in a year as Biden’s touted climate bill allocated over 10 years, his policies have been far from reflecting that threat.
Starring Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former speechwriter noted: “Biden and Trump are really two sides of the same coin in foreign policy: Their platforms of ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘America Back’ both represent different kinds of nostalgia for a world that structurally can no longer exist.” The emerging multipolar world requires abandoning both Trump’s “aggressive nationalism” and Biden’s “missionary liberalism” in favor of something much more realistic.
History will judge whether Biden was a consistent president; instant grades are written in the wind. But some conclusions seem obvious. Biden cemented the break with the failed market fundamentalism of the conservative era that Trump ushered in. That era is over. In contrast, Biden sought to assert America’s role as an “indispensable nation” abroad that could no longer continue. What will happen next remains to be seen. And with Trump, a cynical, ill-informed, transactional fraud returning to the presidency, it’s unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
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