President Joe Biden leaves office in 36 days not with a bang but a resentful whimper, an opinion piece in the Washington Post argued Sunday.
The op-ed by Cleve R. Wootson Jr. is headlined “Biden touts his legacy, but frustration seeps through.” It looks back over Biden’s years in office and posits that for all his ambitions, the Biden legacy will be shallow and marked more by bitter disappointment than overarching achievement made evident since his defenestration at the hands of his own Democratic party.
The anger, regrets, and misgivings that colored Biden’s last months before his party pushed him out were evident to all even before Kamala Harris was anointed, pollsters included:
“At times, Biden’s frustrations, even resentments, have seeped through,” the piece states early on.
The article then lists the manifest disappointments of the departing octogenarian, stating:
He has lamented that he did not put his name on pandemic stimulus checks so voters could better connect him with the country’s economic rebound. He has talked about his successful efforts to sidestep a recession and worried aloud that Donald Trump would take credit for the humming economy he’ll inherit. And he fired a challenge at Republicans who attacked his record to gain control of the White House and Congress: Let’s see if you actually hate my programs as much as you say.
Despite that mixture of bravado and political intent, he “now he joins a list of presidents limited to a single term, and his chosen successor was decisively defeated.”
The piece argues there are some historians who follow the presidency who say anger has always been at Biden’s side, “when he feels underestimated” and those moments have have been unmistakable because Biden has lived down to estimations more times than not.
“There has always been this issue of resentment with Biden. He resented [former president Barack] Obama and crew for supplanting him in 2008 and for telling him not to run in [2016], and he has many other resentments,” Tevi Troy, a presidential historian who recently published a book on the relationship between presidents and CEOs, is quoted in the piece.
“No One Will Ever Vote for Me Again” Biden Rants Incoherently
“But can you imagine how resentful he is of the shifting narratives and the way he’s been pushed aside and manipulated and not treated fairly. So yeah, I can see him being resentful.”
Troy is quoted again in the piece delivering a further summation of Biden and his opponents, not just within Democrats but those he opposed at the ballot box. Ultimately President-elect Donald Trump looks like the winner Biden hoped he would be himself:
“Biden was seen as the guy who beat Trump and … who put us back on the path to normality. He was the hero to the Democrats,” Troy said. “But when Trump wins a second time, Biden is seen as too old and not fully up to snuff, by the end. He’s the one who enabled Trump’s return.”
Trump, meanwhile, will probably go down as one of the most consequential politicians of the 21st century, Troy said. “He’s one of the 15 people who’ve served two terms, which puts him in elite company. Those are the ones we talk about, all the ones who are part of the historical conversation are the two-termers. The one-termers are the ones who are largely forgotten.”
Biden’s time in the White House ends on Monday, 20 January 2025, when Donald Trump will officially become the next President of the United States.
The presidential inauguration is always held on that January date as specified by the Constitution’s 20th Amendment.
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