CNN
—
President Joe Biden said his presidency would be a bridge, and it was.
But he failed to build on the promise of a new Democratic generation.
Rather, he is a president who has been in office for far too long, and whose administration has vacillated between two terms of his archenemy, Donald Trump, who was once defeated and then returned to power.
It would be churlish to call this a political tragedy for Biden. After all, this is a man who lived through unending personal anguish after burying his first wife and two children. But that is the fate given to him by history, and it is also a grave miscalculation in his own election.
This dark reality overshadowed Biden’s farewell speech Wednesday night. His latest attempt to write a first draft of the history of the presidency, he argues, is worth far more than the infamy of a single term.
“I am eternally grateful to the American people,” the president said from the Oval Office shortly after 8 p.m. on the East Coast. “After 50 years in public office, I can assure you that I still believe in the ideals of this country, where the strength of our institutions and the character of our people matter and must survive.”
But by Monday afternoon, the enemy who warned Biden represented a deadly threat to the soul of America in 2020 was back behind the Oval Office desk, and Biden was retiring to Delaware. I’ll have to leave the country to face what happens next.
With this in mind, Mr. Biden used his speech to warn about the threat he believes represents a second term for Mr. Trump and what he describes as the “robber gang” of his successor. In fact, he seems to believe that the existential threat is greater now than when he began the 2020 campaign.
“Tonight, I want to warn this country about something that is of great concern to me,” Biden said. He cited the “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very small number of ultra-wealthy people” and warned of the “dangerous consequences of abuse of power left unchecked.”
As President George Washington said in his farewell address, Mr. Biden warned of a storm brewing around democracy.
“Today, an oligarchy with extreme wealth, power, and influence has taken shape in America that literally threatens our entire democracy, our fundamental rights and freedoms, and everyone’s fair chance to advance.” he said.
And, following in the footsteps of President Dwight Eisenhower, who invoked the threat posed by the military-industrial complex as he left the White House, Mr. He spoke about the dangers of a new era posed by millionaires and billionaires. management.
“I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a high-tech industrial complex that could pose a real danger to our country,” Biden said. “The American people are buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling abuses of power. Freedom of the press is crumbling… Social media has abandoned fact-checking. The truth is It is covered up by lies told for power and profit.”
Biden spoke with a resolute demeanor while placing a photo of his late son Beau, who died of brain cancer, on a table over his left shoulder. However, the burden of his grueling four-year presidency, which ended at the age of 90, was keenly evident in his reedy voice and slurred speech. If Biden still wants to be president, age robbed him of the ability to pitch his ideas and write the nation’s story months ago.
Viewers wondered how Biden decided he was fit to serve a full second term, which would last until he was 86 years old.
End of career and political era
Biden didn’t just bid farewell to the country Wednesday night.
He talks about the only adult life he’s ever known, his decades as a senator, vice president, and president, and the undiminished ambition that sustained him through personal struggles. I pulled down the blinds. He arrived in Washington half a century ago as a young senator, already considered a potential candidate for future commander in chief.
At the time, Mao Zedong was leading China, Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist, and Richard Nixon was working in the office where Biden spoke Wednesday.
In short, the 82-year-old president was bringing an end to an era of politics — and a connection to the 20th century and a worldview he shared with all of his modern predecessors, although that worldview was uniquely American. It was built around an alliance system. Cold War.
Mr. Biden was born in 1942 when Mr. Franklin Roosevelt was in the White House, but at noon Monday he became a successor who appears intent on destroying the Western geopolitical infrastructure originally envisioned by FDR. He will hand over power.
One of the ironies of Mr. Biden’s long and excruciating departure since Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss in the November election is that, at least on paper, Mr. Biden could become one of the most successful one-term presidents. That was it.
Mr. Biden has led the U.S. economy to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, which Mr. Trump mismanaged, with growth and job creation that outpaced all of America’s major competitors. His accomplishments in Congress are more impressive than President Trump’s first term or the second terms of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Passing a massive pandemic recovery bill, a rare bipartisan infrastructure package, and new legislation to revive manufacturing and create a new U.S. semiconductor industry, he is the most consequential lawmaker since Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. Some would say he was the most prolific signer of . He has lowered the prices of some prescription drugs, but his gains have been overshadowed by Trump’s recent return.
He noted that these bills could have significant long-term effects that extend beyond the president’s term. These are key to a potential reassessment of Biden’s legacy in the coming decades. All of these were created by a working-class man from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who was ostracized in the age of globalization and who benefited less than most from President Trump’s massive tax cuts in his first term. It was designed by Joe Biden. But the irony is that the blue-collar Democratic Party has come under Trump’s watch, completing his transformation of the Republican Party and paving the way for his return to power.
Abroad, Mr. Biden has stepped into the vacuum created by Mr. Trump’s disdain for America’s allies during his first term. He succeeded in saving Ukraine from Russia’s illegal and brutal invasion, while avoiding plunging the United States into war with a nuclear-armed rival. Presidents don’t get instant credit for averting disaster. But this important accomplishment is often ignored by hawks who complain that Biden has given Ukraine enough weapons to survive, but not enough to win.
In Asia, Mr. Biden has strengthened the alliance with the United States, largely adopting Mr. Trump’s confrontational approach toward China. But his rallying cry that “America is back” after ousting his predecessor from the White House has now given way to the return of President Trump, who is besieged by global populism. It echoes hollowly between us.
Mr. Biden will leave office once the overwhelming majority of Americans turn their backs on his presidency.
A new CNN/SSRS poll released Wednesday shows his approval ratings are in line with their lowest drop ever. Even fewer people rate his performance positively on immigration (31%), foreign affairs (32%) and the economy (33%).
In retrospect, Biden’s term was precipitated by four historical mistakes, including that the White House told the American people that the events they saw unfolding with their own eyes were actually This also includes telling them that something has not happened.
As evidenced by the president’s misplaced “Bidenomics” victory lap, the administration has never understood the inflationary gut punch it delivers to the American people. The claim that high prices are “temporary” has created a slow-motion political disaster. Officials’ insistence for months that there was no “crisis” at the southern border also misjudged the domestic mood and concerns about illegal immigration, fueling fears of crime and families’ economic struggles. It intersected with a broader sense of anxiety, including the United States, all of which were exploited by President Trump. To this day, Biden insists he made the right decision to end America’s longest war in Afghanistan. But his claim to be a foreign policy expert is belied by haunting footage of refugees clinging to a US military plane that took off from Kabul amid a Taliban advance, and a suicide bomber killing 13 US service members during a chaotic evacuation. shattered by his death. But it was Biden’s insistence that he could defeat Trump again that led to a painful eclipse that culminated in Wednesday’s farewell speech. He decided to run despite polls showing Americans thought he was too old and testimony from voters who consistently gave the same message.
Indeed, Mr. Biden’s presidential term effectively ended with an excruciating 10 minutes in Atlanta in June, when Mr. Biden’s advanced age and murky mental capacity led him to appear in a debate with Mr. Trump on CNN. was exposed. After Biden’s incomprehensible statement, the Republican nominee said what millions of people across the country are thinking in a devastating jab: I don’t think he knew what he said either. ”
Clips of that meeting will likely be played alongside a young Ronald Reagan’s dismissal of the age issue for as long as the televised debate takes place.
Future generations will remember the young Biden, the wise and handsome senator and politician who kept getting knocked down by life but always got back up, or the grandpa the voters chose with a twinkle in his eye and an ocean of empathy in his heart. You won’t remember. In 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, to return to some semblance of normalcy. They would see him at his weakest and most helpless. And unlike Jimmy Carter, whom Biden praised in one of his final acts as president, the outgoing commander-in-chief won’t have decades to replace his one-term reputation.
Biden, who concluded his speech with little political energy left, was like Prospero, the old magician in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, alone on stage when “all charm is gone.”
“Now it’s your turn to guard. May you all be keepers of the torch and keep your faith alive,” Biden told the nation.
“I love America. You love it too. God bless you all.”
