“If I was Lady McBiden, I’d put on my big girl pants, play the long game and think about my husband’s legacy. There aren’t that many people left in America who have something nice to say about Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi is one of them.”
— Alexandra Pelosi, quoted by Politico, on Jill Biden’s bitterness towards Nancy Pelosi for helping push Joe Biden from the presidential race.
Politico: “It was one of many instances over his final weeks in office — a period Biden and his staff hoped to use to burnish his political legacy — that drove home the limitations of even a president’s power to control the agenda. The heightened air of futility punctuated a four-year term that, for everything accomplished legislatively, is ending where it began — with Donald Trump in the White House.”
“Biden’s team struggled in the final days and weeks of his term, as it did for four years, to drive a message that might capture the country’s attention and bolster a battered legacy.”
Politico: “Overshadowing it all, at least for now, is his ejection from the 2024 campaign amid concerns of declining mental acuity — and then the election of Donald Trump, whom Biden had once defeated and dubbed a threat to American democracy.”
“Historians may reevaluate his legacy in the years to come, after achievements and failures alike are put in more context, not to mention what occurs in Trump’s second term. Will Biden ultimately be viewed as a uniquely poor one-term president, or will history be kinder to him with time?”
The White House currently feels “like a morgue” ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, with President Joe Biden feeling “angry” and “melancholy” as he reflects on his legacy, NBC News reports.
One source “close to the president” said Biden was “totally dejected and the people around him are, as well.”
Franklin Foer: “The president’s accomplishments are considerable, but on his signature issue of preserving democracy, he failed spectacularly.”
“The Joe Biden story is one of the great tragedies of American politics. I really mean that. He should be having a glorious, well deserved, highly acclaimed retirement. And he’s not. It’s hard to blame anybody but him.”
— Veteran Democratic political strategist James Carville, quoted by NBC News.
NBC News: “Once the elder statesman who was to serve as a bridge to the next generation of leadership, Biden departs with an array of fractured relationships. He is estranged from some of the people who were once among his most powerful allies.”
“He harbors, along with first lady Jill Biden, a simmering resentment toward former President Barack Obama, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and several former aides, including Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn, all of whom he believes either failed him or pushed him out of the 2024 race.”
Of his relationship with Pelosi, one aide said: “That relationship is permanently damaged.”
“The very richest Americans are among the biggest winners from President Joe Biden’s time in office, despite his farewell address warning of an ‘oligarchy’ and a ‘tech industrial complex’ that threaten U.S. democracy,” Bloomberg reports.
“The 100 wealthiest Americans got more than $1.5 trillion richer over the last four years, with tech tycoons including Elon Musk, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg leading the way… The top 0.1% gained more than $6 trillion.”
Peter Baker: “President Biden ran for the White House promising to be a transitional figure, then once he got there began thinking of himself as a transformational one. But after a tumultuous four years in office, it turns out he was really neither.”
“Instead, Mr. Biden will end up in the history books as an interregnum between two terms of Donald Trump, a break in the middle of a chaotic period of change, for good or ill. Mr. Biden had hoped to make Mr. Trump an asterisk in the American story, soon to be forgotten. Now he will be the one trying to make his case for posterity.”
Gallup: “Majorities of Americans think the U.S. has lost ground in six areas over the past four years, including the federal debt (67%), immigration (64%), the gap between the wealthy and less well-off (60%), the economy (59%), the United States’ position in the world (58%) and crime (51%).”
“Pluralities also say the nation has fallen behind in six other areas: education, terrorism, trade relations with other countries, race relations, the nation’s infrastructure and energy.”
Dan Pfeiffer: Why didn’t voters care about Biden’s many accomplishments?
Dan Balz: “He has much to point to, from an economic recovery out of the pandemic that, despite inflation, is the envy of other countries; to bipartisan legislation to rebuild America’s infrastructure and its semiconductor capacity; to investments aimed at combating the effects of the changing climate. As Biden noted, much of this has not been seen or felt by most voters yet. Many of these projects could take some years to show tangible results.”
“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.”
Washington Post: Biden’s agenda had a big impact. Will history give him credit?
Charlie Sykes: “Some presidents seize the public’s imagination; Biden barely even got its attention. He presumed that he could return to a Before Times style of politics, where the president was a backroom bipartisan dealmaker. Whereas Trump dominated the news, Biden seemed to fade into the background almost from the beginning, seldom using his bully pulpit to rally public support or explain his vision for the country. Trump was always in our faces, but it often felt like Biden was … elsewhere.”
“Biden also misread the trajectory of Trumpism. Like so many others, he thought that the problem of Trump had taken care of itself and that his election meant a return to normalcy. So he chose as his attorney general Merrick Garland, who seems to have seen his role as restoring the Department of Justice rather than pursuing accountability for the man who’d tried to overturn the election. Eventually, Garland turned the cases over to Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought indictments. But it was too late.”
Jonathan Last: “You won’t find a bigger admirer of Joe Biden anywhere outside his immediate family. I’ve written favorably about him over and over (and over).”
“And while Mike Pence might be a good father/brother/husband/friend, he was most definitely not my cup of chamomile. He spent four years propping up, bowing to, covering for, and enabling Donald Trump.”
“Joe Biden never had anything but the best intentions; Mike Pence’s intentions were rarely on the level.”
“And yet one of these men sacrificed his career to save democracy and the other made a series of choices which concluded with the restoration of Donald Trump and the complete takeover of the federal government by forces that are—at best—agnostic on the question of small-l liberalism.”
“President Biden left his mark on the federal judiciary by installing a large number of appointees from diverse backgrounds, but he made few inroads on changing the ideological balance of courts that Donald Trump made more conservative during his first term,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Now, Trump’s return to office could ensure that the federal courts lean solidly in a conservative direction for years to come.”
“President Biden has less than a month to go until his one-term presidency ends, and he is feeling reflective,” the New York Times reports.
“He is voicing regrets about his decision not to sign his name to Covid relief checks and about his longtime reputation — once considered a virtue — of being the poorest lawmaker in Congress. And now, with a planned visit to meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican next month, the president is signaling that he may have additional issues on his mind.”
New York Times: “This is the twilight of Mr. Biden’s presidency, the final days of the final chapter of an epic half-century political journey that has had more than its share of twists and turns. Time is catching up with Mr. Biden. He looks a little older and a little slower with each passing day. Aides say he remains plenty sharp in the Situation Room, calling world leaders to broker a cease-fire in Lebanon or deal with the chaos of Syria’s rebellion. But it is hard to imagine that he seriously thought he could do the world’s most stressful job for another four years.”
“That does not make it any easier as Mr. Biden heads toward the exit. Nothing that has happened since he was forced to drop out of the race in July has made that decision look wrong, yet Donald J. Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris has been interpreted as a repudiation of Mr. Biden. It stung. It still stings. But unlike Mr. Trump four years ago, this president accepts the outcome.”
Seth Masket: “I think the best lesson to draw from Biden’s presidency is a quote from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: ‘You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story.'”
“Biden has been one of the most effective presidents of my lifetime, delivering on more party priorities and progressive goals in four short years than just about anyone thought possible. And he leaves office largely reviled, including by many he sought to help.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.