How will history assess President Biden?
stuck with low approval ratingThe president said this week that he believes history will be kind: “You know, it will take time to feel the full impact of everything we've done together,” he said in his letter. oval office farewell address This week. “But the seeds have been sown, and they will grow, and they will continue to bloom for decades to come.”
During his four years in office, Mr. Biden met with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson's policies and ambitions have been compared. He has said that John F. Kennedy inspired his life partly through public service. Roosevelt's portrait hangs over the Oval Office fireplace along with paintings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. His achievements, victories and public words are ones that most commanders-in-chief would emulate.
There is no doubt that Mr. Biden has done great things to reshape the country and the world. History may show that they saved American democracy from serious threats – or maybe, time will show us that they merely slowed them down. History will also record that he failed to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin invasion of ukraineBut it united Western democracies against unprovoked aggression and expanded major military alliances.
He initiated an overdue and more overt shift in American focus on the Indo-Pacific, strengthening and expanding agreements with China's neighbors, keeping lines of communication open with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but criticizing China's aggressive spy craft and American Failed to stop the unprecedented infiltration. Telecommunication systems.
As president, Mr. Biden immediately pushed for a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill, including direct aid to low-income Americans, a record amount of unemployment benefits, hundreds of billions of dollars for states and cities to reopen and rebuild, and Tens of billions of dollars were involved. Small businesses like barber shops and bars were ordered to stay open and pay workers.
Later, a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill authorized hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild airports, bridges and highways, billions of dollars to build a network of electric vehicle chargers and more broadband internet. Finally, the Inflation Reduction Act triggered record spending to fight climate change and tax reform — even if its nominal goal, reducing inflation, remains unfulfilled.
So, does that work put Biden on par with FDR and LBJ? Progressive Democrats think so, and their Republican critics certainly condemn the extensive legislative work accomplished by Mr. Biden — and are vowing to undo much of it.
But history may also compare him with two other presidents.
First, George H.W. Bush, another exceptionally experienced public servant and political activist, who rose to the presidency after two terms as vice president. He was a president who worked to reshape the global order after the end of the Cold War, yet struggled to explain and defend when it came time for re-election. After high approval ratings, his re-election faltered in 1992 amid the economic recession. Bush also suffered from the perception that he was out of touch with ordinary Americans, especially after an encounter with a supermarket scanner. He was no match for the skillful campaigning of rival Bill Clinton, who understood better that to win a candidate would have to spend time on late-night and daytime television talk shows and casually brag about his underwear choices on MTV. Questions have to be asked.
History has been kind to the elder Bush, ranking him among the most qualified people ever to serve.
Voters may also place Mr. Biden in a two-man league with a lesser-known predecessor: Benjamin Harrison.
In office from 1889 to 1893, he served between the terms of Grover Cleveland, making Harrison The answer to the weekly pub trivia question, “Who is the second president to serve between two non-consecutive terms?”
But Mr Biden would not mind the comparison, as Harrison is known for reshaping US foreign policy with new global alliances. He worked with Congress to approve at that time the largest amount of money ever spent on domestic infrastructureAnd he used the levers of the federal government to rein in corporate monopolies.
Harrison was also the first president to initiate a “front porch campaign”, where he would give short speeches to delegations of voters visiting his Indianapolis home.
Now, he actually sounds like Mr. Biden – for once Covid-19 pandemic Afterward, the president went back to his Wilmington, Delaware residence and gave short speeches over Zoom for his party's nomination, and later conducted live television interviews from a basement studio. When he did go out, it was mostly to campaign at a safe distance while voters in battleground states watched from their vehicles — and honked their horns, like a part in a live-action drive-in movie. Are taking.
Then-President Donald Trump complained that Mr. Biden was moving away from his more passive campaign strategy, but it worked.
But four years later, with initially healthy approval ratings, Mr Biden's re-election has stalled amid an economic downturn and the skillful campaigning of his opponent, Trump, who better understood the candidate by spending time and views on podcasts and TikTok. To win in big public events.
Mr Biden gave a remarkably candid self-assessment during an interview broadcast Thursday night on MSNBC. Asked how he sold his early legislative victories to the country, and decided to keep his name off COVID-era relief checks being sent to low-income Americans, the president said, “I’m not a very good conman. … I almost spent too much time on policy, not enough time on politics.”
That self-reflection was probably James A. In class with predecessors like Garfield and Kennedy, Biden invites the most painful comparisons. “What if?” Class: What if they had had more time, lived longer, been healthy enough to serve longer?
Garfield died about two months later when an assassin's bullet could not be removed from his body and infected him. And of course, Kennedy's assassination 1,036 days into his term ended generational hopes for a new kind of leadership.
Mr Biden vowed during his 2020 campaign to be a bridge to the next generation – a subtle, but not clear signal that he would bow out after one term. His final decision has been well documented and will be hotly debated for decades to come: What if he had bowed out? What would have happened if the Democratic Party had had an open primary election – would Vice President Harris have won?
We will never know.
