In less than 24 hours, Biden's Presidency will be over. As is tradition, he will have tea with incoming President Donald Trump as a ceremonial representation of the peaceful transfer of power. Trump will then be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, and Joe Biden will leave Washington DC as Citizen Joe.
Joe's 4 years in the Oval Office (2 1/2 if you count the time he spent at Rehoboth Beach) will become the topic of historians, journalists, and history teachers. There will be plenty to write about; if Joe's presidency was anything, it was eventful.
Author David Greenberg, a history professor from Rutgers University, takes a (less than) nostalgic look back at Joe's 4 years as POTUS in a Politico article. Writing for Politico, the article has a certain slant, as you might imagine, and is filled with more 'What Ifs' than the MCU cartoon of the same name.
A historian explains how Joe Biden could have gone down in history as a great president – but instead, his legacy “will likely be dismantled” by Trump.https://t.co/4nhCIwLb7Z
— POLITICO (@politico) January 18, 2025
Greenburg wrote a book titled 'Republic of Spin,' and we imagine he must have been dizzy after writing this article. To be fair, he isn't overly kind to Biden, saying he will likely be remembered as a 'well-intentioned but only moderately effective placeholder.' Biden's greatest sin, it seems, is the place he was holding will be taken by Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden’s bid for historical greatness came to grief in one day: Nov. 5, 2024. Had he or Vice President Kamala Harris won the presidential election and a second consecutive Democratic term, history probably would have cast Biden in a heroic light: as the man who returned America to normalcy after the chaos of Donald Trump’s first term; who got the nation back on its feet after the Covid-19 pandemic; who reasserted U.S. leadership in the world after a season of retreat; who rebuilt democracy after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault.
Instead, Biden is now apt to be recalled as a well-intentioned but only moderately effectual placeholder. He had several proud achievements but, owing to his brief tenure and his personal limitations, many of those achievements will likely be dismantled by the very man he believed he had exiled from the seat of power.
As Greenberg writes, the only thing that could ruin Biden's legacy (at least to the left) is Trump's return to the Oval Office. Even if Harris had lost in a landslide to Ron DeSantis or another Republican, Joe would be remembered as the man who beat Trump, and to Democrats, that would have been enough.
It wasn't enough. After beating Trump in 2020, Joe was expected to be President, a job he wasn't quite up to. Four years later, wars in Ukraine and Israel, economic pressures driven by high inflation, an open border, and immigrant crime had the American people remembering the Trump years fondly. The article meticulously details these issues with caveats. If 'Joe had only done this,' things might have been different.
Early in Biden’s presidency, in 2021, many Americans, shaking off the nerve-wracking four-year speedboat ride, exhaled with relief. Biden, encouraged by his victory, came to regard himself — not without reason — as democracy’s savior. Eyeing opportunities to “go big” as the country sloughed off the pandemic, he indulged and even bought into the overwrought comparisons of his agenda to the New Deal. Even more than other presidents, he adopted a grandiose view of his own tenure as a world-historical turning point.
What 'Democracy's Savior' had achieved through his grandiose plan of overspending, over-regulation, and weak foreign policy was to drive an electorate who had handed him the reigns just 4 years prior right back to the man he had taken the reigns from.
Donald Trump's is a story of resilience and one of American history's greatest political comebacks. That comeback was only possible because Joe Biden stumbled out of the gate and metaphorically tripped and fell more often than he physically tripped and fell during his time in office.
No amount of spin or revisionist history can change that.
I think Biden beat Trump to it, folks. pic.twitter.com/BBiCmCNY0g
— Charles X Proxy™ (@Charlemagne0814) January 18, 2025
Nice try, but nope.
— IT Guy (@ITGuy1959) January 18, 2025
By any objective measure Biden was terrible.
And… the cover-up of his mental decline will ultimately rank up as one of the great scandals in our history.
The Biden Administration was terrible, but as time passed, it became evident that he wasn't the man in charge. His cognitive decline made him the perfect puppet president to the unelected bureaucrats who were really running the show.
If your legacy can be dismantled by another person, it was never a legacy at all.
— The Suede Denim Secret Police (@SDSPOLICE) January 19, 2025
His legacy would be that of the man who beat Trump right up until Trump won again.
David Greenberg, a professor of history and journalism and media studies at Rutgers. What a nutjob, @RutgersU.
— Red Dot in a Blue Dot in a Red State (@reddotaustintx) January 18, 2025
Dave is just a typical statist university professor. The worldview is different from inside that academic bubble.
It’s not just dismantling-what Biden did TO America is unforgivable. Open border, disastrous foreign policy, Inflation Reduction Act that lead to inflation. And much more.
— Butterdog (@Butters09016449) January 18, 2025
The truth is a president's legacy is decided by history. Nothing written now or in the near future will have much to say about it, but don't worry about Dave; he'll have plenty of time to revise his revisions later.
As for Trump, he will begin the process of fixing the mess that Biden left behind. It's why We, the people, elected him... Again.
We expect he'll start tomorrow, shortly after tea.
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