A Greek Tragedy, Or Something More?

Joe Biden's legacy is not as simplistic as pundits have painted

Exiting the stage (Photo Credit: Michael Reynolds / EPA / Bloomberg via Getty Images file)

As Joe Biden and Kamala Harris prepare to leave the White House, pundits have churned out their judgments on the outgoing administration like they’re judgments from god. If you read through the opinion and analysis coverage by most media, they might paint the picture as one thing: Joe Biden’s term is a failure because his party lost the 2024 election.

The Financial Times’ Edward Luce argued he will be remembered chiefly for easing Trump’s return, and his term ended as a Greek tragedy thanks to his hubris.

If the essence of Greek tragedy is that the hero is undone by his flaws, Joe Biden gets star billing. He defeated Donald Trump, stood up to Russia, enacted more reforms than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and bequeaths a robust economy. That made Biden a hero to America’s left and beyond. Yet most of his achievements will now be erased. His legacy is Trump’s return. After Biden, the deluge. He largely has himself to blame.

Never-Trump conservative Charlie Sykes echoed a similar sentiment in The Atlantic, writing that he failed to grasp both the political moment and the essential mission of his presidency.

When he ran for president in 2020, Biden described himself as a “transition candidate” and a “bridge” to a new generation of leaders. But instead of stepping aside for those younger leaders, Biden chose to seek another term, despite the growing evidence of his decline. With the future of democracy at stake, Biden’s inner circle appeared to shield the octogenarian president. His team didn’t just insist that voters ignore what was in front of their eyes; it also maintained that the aging president could serve out another four-year term. Some Democrats clung to denial—and shouted down internal critics—until Biden’s disastrous debate performance put an end to the charade.

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As the passing of Jimmy Carter reminds us, presidential legacies are complicated matters, and it is difficult to predict the verdict of history. But as Biden leaves office, he is less a transformational figure than a historical parenthesis. He failed to grasp both the political moment and the essential mission of his presidency.

Other presidents have misunderstood their mandate. But in Biden’s case, the consequences were existential: By his own logic, the Prime Directive of his presidency was to preserve democracy by preventing Donald Trump’s return to power. His failure to do so will likely be the lasting legacy of his four years in office.

An analysis piece by the Washington Post titled “Biden’s fateful decision to run in 2024 will be part of his legacy,” details how his term will be perceived by his decision to run for office again.

That’s the record of a single term, a mirror on what has been. The question of whether Biden should have run for a second term is different, and it has been a central part of the discussion among Democrats for the past two years. Also looming is the question of whether Democrats would have fared any better against Trump if he had chosen not to run and Democrats had held a contested primary that would have begun early in 2023.

The latter is one of those unanswerable “What if?” questions of history. Nonetheless, it is pertinent, given all the discussions that surrounded Biden’s decision to seek a second term and later the efforts by Democratic Party leaders to persuade him to get out of the race and yield to Vice President Kamala Harris in what turned out to be a losing campaign.

In many articles, the tone and coverage by pundits seem to be more out of spite than of genuine analysis, acting more like food critics trying to critique a modest meal by a Michelin star chef, and grasping on the biggest flaw they could find and amplify it to a billion.

That is not to say Biden’s hubris doesn’t deal a dramatic blow to his legacy. Let’s be clear: All politicians, especially those who seek high office, have a big ego hidden inside them, no matter their character. Believing you can run the most powerful country in the world takes some intense self-preparation, but in Biden’s case, that has actively undermined many of the good intentions he set out at the beginning of his term.

Earlier this year, during a rare one-to-one interview with USA Today, Biden made two distinctly alarming claims. For one, when asked about whether he could serve another four years, he replied "So far, so good. But who knows what I'm going to be when I'm 86 years old?" Another damning claim was when he insisted he could win the election “based on polling,” he told Susan Page "When Trump was running again for re-election, I really thought I had the best chance of beating him. But I also wasn't looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old. But I don't know. Who the hell knows?"

This is where Biden’s ego shows, setting aside the president’s uncertainty about his cognitive and physical ability, it is delusional to believe he could have won the 2024 election if it was him against Trump. Based on insider revelations, Biden was setting the Democrats on a course to lose many blue states (Including some big names like California and New York, both have seen a swing towards Trump in the actual election), and Harris at least pulled back the Democrats from electoral annihilation. For those who want to bash how Biden’s hubris and ego have clouted his judgment, I share their frustrations. Biden’s ego in the final months of his term has already cost himself parts of his legacy and the Democratic party its power, history will decide what final cost America and the world will pay.

However, in opposition to most pundits, I would argue that it is a narrow view to see the Biden presidency as simply a tragedy because he didn’t win the 2024 election. After all, it covers up a much more complicated legacy that although it may not have achieved the transformational figure Biden claimed as he entered his presidency, talks of a historical footnote is a significant rush to judgment.

As much as Biden failed this time, let’s not forget that he won the 2020 election with 81,283,501 popular votes, the most any president has ever received in American history. With many begrudging Joe Biden did not drop out until July 2024, which is two years too late for some pundits, don’t discount the fact he dropped out. In a time when the peaceful transfer of power has become a luxury thanks to authoritarian leaders and wannabe dictators, bashing the final decision to drop out will only provide incentives for bad and worse examples.

Even on a Biden critic side, only bashing him for not dropping out as early as people want provides a big disservice to the other glaring flaws surrounding his administration. Let’s set aside the frenzied talk of people inside Biden’s inner circle shielding the public from the full extent of the president’s decline, a topic only history and post-mortem reports should comment on. Among reasonable critiques of Biden’s failures, the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan was a catastrophic move that descended the US, its allies, and the people of Afghanistan into avoidable turmoil, he only made last-minute efforts to curb the border crisis that has intensified since the beginning of his term, his circumvented student loan forgiveness plans which were ruled as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and Biden’s slowwalking in providing military aide to Ukraine was best described by Phillips Payson O’Brien who wrote the Biden administration “treated the conflict like a crisis to be managed, not a war to be won.”

The core reason behind the tragedy of Joe Biden is a tragedy of institutionalism, a governance approach the president has championed through decades of public service. Take Biden’s controversial pardon of his son Hunter, he promised repeatedly not to pardon his son but did so anyway. Many critics, including those who supported the president, called it a broken promise. But in a more charitable view, if not for the fact that Trump had won and his appointees have vowed retribution and forever investigations against Hunter, Biden would not have pardoned his son. Hunter’s pardon exposes a fatal trap of institutionalism that Joe Biden had repeatedly fallen into in 2024: Biden believed for most of his term that not interfering in his son’s investigation, and letting the Justice Department do its do-diligence would lead to a positive outcome for the country. When the opposite of what he and the institution desired happened instead, any action he took to mitigate the damage was deemed against the governance system he believed in, and became a heretic and a liar.

Biden misread the moment. Appointing Merrick Garland which led to an unforgivable slow-walking on the Trump trials will be a sore regret in modern American history, the president’s faith in American voters who will choose the better angels of our times also crumbled spectacularly during the election. Joe Biden betted that a better America would lead to popular support, now he leaves office with a worse approval rating than Donald Trump, who instigated an insurrection before he left office in disgrace.

This is all the more damning given what Biden had inherited, because do you still remember what was it like on January 20, 2021? A raging pandemic that was on track to kill more than 1 million Americans, an economic downturn that has worsened throughout the pandemic, resentment and distrust between political parties after Trump denied the 2020 election results, the January 6 Capitol Riots that nearly broke American democracy. Even though many old problems remain, and new issues like inflation have emerged to challenge the Biden presidency, you cannot deny Biden tried his best to curb the worst-case scenario.

On foreign policy, Joe Biden’s support in the Western liberal world order has shown both its brightest successes and its worst flaws. With Ukraine, Biden deserves much credit for galvanizing Europe and uniting a continent against Russia, plus his iron-clad support for Ukraine has been crucial in the months since Putin’s ill-fated invasion. However, Gaza exposed the deepest problems that critics have lodged against the Western-led order. Unlike the Russo-Ukranian war, Biden has been much softer on rhetoric as Netanyahu’s expanding Middle East war has devastated Gaza, while diplomatic efforts have failed to stop Israel from widening its war in Lebanon against Hezbollah. The US, under Joe Biden, has tied its reputation with Israel’s war effort, failing to even lodge the barest of critiques against war crimes and potential crimes against humanity conducted by Israeli forces, and the country will continue to suffer the rhetorical blowback in the years to come.

Undeniably, Joe Biden has the most successful domestic policy record in modern political history. Among the biggest legislative accomplishments include a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law that made major investments in roads, bridges, and broadband that will last far beyond his presidency, the $2.2 trillion Inflation Reduction Act was the biggest climate bill in history, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan gave Americans cash to cope with the pandemic downturn, and the $280 billion CHIPS Act aims to position the US to outcompete China in producing semiconductors and other advanced tech. In smaller but not insignificant accomplishments, Biden expanded overtime guarantees for millions, pushed to make an oral contraceptive available without a prescription, signed the first significant gun safety law in 30 years, signed the PACT act that expands health care and benefits for Veterans exposed to toxic substances and was pushed forward with the help of comedian Jon Stewart after years of lobbying, prevented discriminatory mortgage lending, appointed the first black female justice to the Supreme Court, made a sweeping crackdown on “junk fees” and overdraft charges, helped pass reform through the Electoral Count Act, set up a penalty for college programs that trap students in debt, and became the first sitting president to join a picket line. However, for many major legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, there are fears the second Trump term will curtail the positive benefits it brings before it could become reality.

In many ways, Biden’s legacy is leashed to the legacy of Trump’s second term. As Biden critic Kori Schake wrote on Foreign Policy, the president’s foreign policy (and arguably domestic policy) fell short by their grandiose standards.

The standards that the Biden administration set for itself are one way by which to measure the success or failure of its policies. And by the Biden team’s own criteria, its foreign policies have not met its grandiose standards. The middle class appeared more concerned about inflation than democracy at home or America being back abroad; near the end of Biden’s presidency, two-thirds of U.S. voters considered the country on the wrong track. And rather than strengthening democracy at home, the Biden administration has become the bridge between the first and second Trump presidencies.

In retrospect, a reason why I have more sympathy for Joe Biden than many other politicians is because deep down, he is genuinely a good man who wants to do his best to do good things. Jonathan Caphart wrote in the Washington Post about his gratitude for Biden, which is worth a read.

Biden isn’t perfect. Any critic could trawl his 50 years in public life to find comments and votes that reflected the popular sentiments of the time but might shock consciences today. As the nation evolved, so did he.

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My admiration for Biden is also rooted in the character of a man whose lifetime of public service is intertwined with a lifetime of public pain.

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Biden went on to win the Democratic nomination and the White House in 2020. Once in office, Biden kept defying the odds by racking up legislative victories that seemed impossible and helping stave off a presumed red wave in 2022. After interviews with Biden in 2022 and 2024, I felt I fully understood what fueled him. He loves the job because of the power it gives him to solve problems — the more intractable the better.

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Still, Biden is a good man who brought his entire imperfect self to the world’s most unforgiving job, and his faith in the American people was unshakable. “We’re the United States of America,” Biden says at the end of almost every speech. “There’s nothing beyond our capacity if we set our mind to it and we do it together.”

I swell with pride every time I hear him say it, for I know that I am part of the “our” in his vision. He has shown me by his actions. And for that I had to say thank you.

As a final departing note for the Joe Biden presidency, Franklin Forer summarized it best in his book The Last Politician: “Providing an instructive example of the tedious nobility of the political vocation. Unheroic but honorably human, he will be remembered as the old hack who could.”