Mission unaccomplished: Why Biden’s legacy’s now at the mercy of Trump

Presidential reputations can usually be measured by whether what gets listed after the word “but” outweighs what comes before. Lyndon Johnson, if judged solely by his domestic achievements, would have joined the pantheon of White House greats. Just his role in passing landmark civil rights legislation, which demolished racial apartheid in the American south and finally made universal suffrage a reality (yes, it took until 1965), was Lincolnesque. But then there was Vietnam, a conflict that Johnson escalated, and a war that America eventually lost, which forever will shadow his legacy. “Buts” don’t come much bigger than that.

Ronald Reagan restored America’s confidence after the long national nightmare of Vietnam, Watergate and the Iranian hostage crisis, and helped the United States finally triumph in the Cold War. But his trickle-down economics fuelled growing income disparities, while his mantra that government was the problem rather the solution turned more of the American people against Washington. Both contributed to the rise of Donald Trump.

Illustration by Dionne Gain

What comes after the “but” for Joe Biden is also what comes after his presidency: the restoration of Donald Trump. America’s 46th president cast himself as the saviour of democracy, a unifying figure who could safeguard the country from the return of the 45th president. But at noon on January 20, Trump will also become the 47th president, and lord knows what could happen next. Historians, then, will reflect on a mission unaccomplished, and blame Biden himself for its failure.

They will also ruminate on an “if” as well as a “but”. Had the 82-year-old stepped aside earlier in his presidency – he intimated in 2020 he would be a “bridge” to the next generation – then the Democrats could have conducted a proper primary process to decide the best candidate to take on Trump.

President Joe Biden meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House after the election in November.Credit: AP

Here I should insert a mea culpa. Early in 2023, after the Democrats’ stronger-than-expected performance in the 2022 congressional elections, I half-jokingly argued in favour of the Weekend at Bernie’s strategy. It recalled the 1989 black comedy in which Bernie was dead, but other characters pretended he was still alive. Even a doddery Biden, I suggested, might stand a better chance of winning the all-important Rust Belt states than younger alternatives. But by early 2024, as evidence mounted of his physical and mental waning, it was obvious that Biden’s age was an insuperable liability.

When finally he handed the torch to Kamala Harris, she turned out to be a stronger candidate than many of us who covered her lacklustre 2019 campaign predicted. Nonetheless, throughout her 107-day whirlwind campaign there was always the nagging feeling that other Democrats might have mounted a stronger challenge. Gretchen Whitmer, maybe, the governor of Michigan who had already proven she could win re-election in a vital battleground state. Or Josh Shapiro, the popular Democratic governor of must-win Pennsylvania. Given the mood of anti-incumbency, and the loyalty of the MAGA base, Trump’s victory arguably was historically inescapable. But by gripping that torch for so long, Biden made it almost historically inevitable.

As for the president’s pre-but legacy, it’s strong. Under the guise of the deceptively named Inflation Reduction Act, Biden pushed through a landmark federal climate law that could cut US emissions almost in half by 2035 when compared with 2005 levels. A desperately needed infrastructure act will modernise America’s airports, roads and bridges. The CHIPS and Science Act should turn America into a semiconductor powerhouse and end a supply chain vulnerability that weakened its national defences.

Jill Biden looks on as Joe Biden is sworn in as US president four years ago.Credit: AP

Early in his term, he mobilised the federal government to combat COVID-19. In doing so, he became the first Democratic president since the 1980s to push back strongly against the Reaganite idea that government was pernicious. Both Clinton, who mimicked Reagan’s rhetoric in declaring “the era of big government is over”, and Obama, who was unexpectedly effusive in his praise for “The Gipper”, made too many ideological concessions to Reaganism.

Biden also deserves credit for his achievements as Obama’s vice-president. The Affordable Care Act, the biggest health reform since Johnson’s “Great Society”, came to be known as “Obamacare”. But what Biden famously described at the signing ceremony as a “big f---ing deal”, might not have been enacted without his legislative nous.

It’s an impressive record of accomplishment, and gives Biden at least the chance of benefiting from the same kind of positive revisionism that has reshaped our perceptions of George Herbert Walker Bush, Harry S. Truman and Jimmy Carter. All three were derided at the time but have since been lauded, and even lionised, by friendly historians.

In foreign affairs, Biden’s legacy is mixed. After Vladimir Putin made further incursions into Ukraine in 2022, Biden rallied the West at a time when it looked like the rise of militaristic authoritarianism might go unchallenged. His withdrawal from Afghanistan was messy – and Afghan women and girls continue to pay a heavy price for the return of the Taliban – but Americans had tired of fighting the post-9/11 wars. After the atrocities of October 7, Biden could have done so much more to rein in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brutal prosecution of the Gaza war, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Will Biden’s reputation ever escape the shadow of Trump’s victory? Maybe it could be salvaged by the cancer moonshot – launched in 2016, after the death of his son Beau, and reignited in 2021 – which aims to prevent more than 4 million cancer deaths by 2047.

Yet the irony of Biden’s legacy is that it could ultimately be determined by his successor. If the Trump restoration ends up being more benign than many fear, then Biden’s four years in office could come to be regarded as the most consequential one-term presidency in US history. If, on the other hand, Trump becomes an American pharaoh, then Biden will be held partly to blame.

Nick Bryant, a former BBC Washington correspondent, is author of The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself.