The hosannas will ring from the rafters for President Biden in Chicago today, as Democratic convention-goers hail him as another FDR with a touch of George Washington for “voluntarily” giving up power. Then they will drop him like a passing fad.
Such is the fate of a President most Americans regard as a failure, and who was headed for defeat in a rematch against Donald Trump. It’s a sad exit for a Presidency that could have been so much better had he honoured his campaign promise to unite the country and be a “transition” from the Trump era.
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Recall that Mr. Biden won the White House, on his third try, as the last, best alternative to defeat Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and his party’s left. He campaigned against Mr. Trump as a national unifier who would shun the extremes and govern from the centre.
In office he has done the opposite. After winning control of a 50-50 Senate in Georgia’s 2021 runoffs, Democrats saw a historic opportunity to pass, well, everything. To keep progressives on side, Mr. Biden struck a Faustian bargain to pursue much of Mr. Sanders’s agenda. To Ms. Warren he gave veto power over his financial regulators. Above all, he sublet his Presidency to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Democrats in Congress, who sought the greatest expansion of government since LBJ’s Great Society.
This began with a $1.9 trillion spending bill in March 2021 in the name of Covid relief, though the pandemic was all but over and the economy was recovering fast. This planted the seeds of the worst inflation in 40 years that hit 9.1% in June 2022 and has reduced the real incomes of Americans.
This was the Biden pattern across his half-century political career. Show him where the party was going and he’d follow. Ron Klain, his first White House chief of staff, advised Mr. Biden to unite his party on Capitol Hill rather than seek compromise with Republicans. His approval rating suffered for it.
Most of his Build Back Better plan died in a narrowly divided Congress. And the giant bills that did pass on party-line votes — the Covid relief extravaganza and the Inflation Reduction Act — have produced record peacetime debt and deficits.
The results of the IRA will play out over many years, but its drug price controls will limit medical cures, and $1 trillion in green subsidies are leading to a vast misallocation of capital. The bipartisan Chips Act and infrastructure bills will yield some new plants and bridges, but at enormous cost.
Mr Biden followed the left on border security, and the main result has been poisoning the chance for any immigration compromise. His failure to adapt on the border may be the mystery of his term.
His foreign policy legacy won’t be complete until we see how the wars play out in Ukraine and the Middle East. But we know his ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan was a sign of national weakness that encouraged adversaries around the world. He wasn’t able to deter Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine, nor Iran and its proxies from threatening the very existence of Israel.
Mr Biden did better in the Pacific, notably in building an architecture of allies willing to resist Chinese domination. The Aukus pact, expanded military ties with Japan, and closer ties with the Philippines are examples.
But history’s harshest verdict may be that, with adversaries on the march, Mr. Biden proposed cuts in US defence spending after inflation every year of his Presidency. This will haunt the next President, whoever it is, if the new axis of adversaries in China, Russia, Iran and elsewhere seek to exploit a U.S. military without the means to meet its global commitments.
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Far from transitioning from Donald Trump, Mr. Biden sought to keep the former President in the political spotlight. He defined all Republicans as MAGA, and he declared that even modest voting-integrity bills in Georgia and elsewhere were the racist equivalent of “Jim Crow 2.0.” He said voters had to choose between “the side of Abraham Lincoln [Democrats] or Jefferson Davis [Republicans].”
Perhaps most damaging as a norm-breaking precedent, Mr. Biden made clear he wanted Mr. Trump to be prosecuted as a criminal. His Justice Department obliged. This made Mr. Trump a martyr to Republican primary voters and helped him win the GOP nomination. Mr Biden didn’t want Mr. Trump to fade away; he wanted to sustain his career long enough to run against him as the Republican easiest to defeat.
Mr Biden’s selfish plan to run for a second term was undone by a growing senescence he was unwilling to admit. Had he announced early in 2023 that he wouldn’t run again, both parties might have reset their primaries with younger nominees better able to address America’s growing challenges at home and abroad.
In the end Mr. Biden was forced out of his re-election ambitions by Mrs. Pelosi and his fellow Democrats lest he take down the entire party this year. His last-minute departure has left America with a choice between an untested Vice President who never had to seek a single primary vote and a former President who is disliked by more than half the public.
Democrats will call this a triumph if Ms. Harris manages to win, but she or Mr. Trump will inherit a country more divided and dispirited than when Joe Biden was elected. That is the unfortunate legacy of the Biden Presidency.
The Wall Street Journal
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