ANALYSIS — One of Joe Biden’s final domestic trips was symbolic of his up-and-down presidency. It was a dish composed of all things Biden, with a solid start mixed with a heaping serving of bad luck, a dash of weirdness — and a family matter as the garnish.
There was the president in New Orleans last week, following a terrorist attack that killed 14 New Year’s revelers, again acing his role as the country’s consoler in chief. But when Air Force One landed in Los Angeles hours later, things began to turn south.
There was no clear objective for the trip, and the schedules released by the White House were light on details. Then came the vintage Biden bad luck: High winds and wildfires canceled the trip’s main event — his remarks about national monuments, a longtime focus for the president.
The White House’s cryptic messaging around the trip became less murky on his final morning out West, when aides announced: “The President and First Lady are stopping by Cedars-Sinai Hospital for the birth of their great-grandchild.” The longer his term went, the more time Biden has seemed to devote to his family, including numerous weekend and overnight trips to his private residence in Wilmington, Del.
Then came another vintage moment from the 82-year-old Biden: a verbal gaffe. His spoken slips, including during a disastrous debate performance over the summer, led Democratic donors and lawmakers to push him to end his reelection bid. “The good news is I’m a great grandfather as of today… A 10-pound baby girl, baby boy.” A reporter traveling with him filed this dispatch: “He clearly appeared to correct himself at the end but it’s not clear which version is correct. Seeking clarification.” None came, however.
The two-and-a-half-day trip had started off so well, just like his term. Biden pushed several major pieces of legislation through Congress, developed a COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan and reconnected America with key allies. Then came a disastrous August 2021. That’s when Biden decided to accelerate America’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which turned deadly and chaotic.
In mid-June 2021, Biden’s approval rating was 56 percent, according to Gallup. By mid-September, it had tumbled to 43 percent. Last month, Gallup put his current approval at 39 percent.
“Some of the same things that happened to Joe Biden happened to Jimmy Carter,” Barbara Perry, co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said during a telephone interview Friday, a day after Carter’s state funeral in Washington. “For the Bidens, Afghanistan was their [Iran] hostage crisis, which really hurt Carter and his legacy. Afghanistan was the real hinge point for Biden’s approval ratings.”
“When you ask the question of ‘What if the Afghanistan withdrawal had gone smoothly?’ You still would’ve had … the president’s own personal and medical issues and his aging issues. And, just as importantly, you still would’ve had inflation,” Perry added.
‘Highly unlikely’
Biden continues to give no ground on his contention he made the right decision on Afghanistan, saying Monday: “In my mind, it was time to end the war and bring our troops home. And that’s what we did. … and I think history will reflect that.”
That was similar to Biden on July 8, 2021, while announcing his accelerated withdrawal decision. “But the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban over-running everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” he said. “It’s up to the people of Afghanistan to decide on what government they want, not us to impose the government on them.”
Only the Taliban did indeed return to power, reestablishing their hard-line rule. The miscalculation has been widely viewed as a turning point for Biden’s presidency. It also gave Donald Trump, now the president-elect, a new line of attack. Trump referred to the chaos over the Afghanistan withdrawal as “the greatest foreign policy humiliation” in U.S. history. He would keep up the critique into the 2024 election — and into the presidential transition period, which Trump contended last week that Biden had made “not smooth.”
From the Afghanistan withdrawal onward, the missteps kept coming for the Biden White House. Far too often, two steps backward would follow one step forward. At the same time, Trump, despite at one point amassing 91 felony charges, became the front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination — and, helped by his harsh criticisms of Biden, cruised to his party’s presidential nod.
Trump also found another area of attack: The Biden administration “was very late to address the crisis at the southern border,” said Republican former Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania.
“They didn’t get serious about it until the presidential election year had already started. And by then, it was really too late,” he said in a Friday phone interview. “And then, of course, there was the inflation. They talked about the economy being a big winner, but inflation was associated with Biden. The administration simply had no good answer for inflation.”
Republican lawmakers’ criticisms of Biden’s policies were summed up in a television interview Sunday by Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee: “Joe Biden is taking every opportunity to wage war on the American economy and on the private sector.”
During a Monday speech at the State Department hailing his foreign policy record, Biden argued that he put the United States ahead of friends and foes alike.
“We increased our diplomatic power, creating more allies than the United States ever had in the history of our nation. We’ve increased our military power, making the most significant investments in the defense industrial base in decades,” he said. “And we’ve increased [our] economic power, building the most dynamic economy in the world.”
Biden also said America was “more capable” and “better prepared than we have been in a long, long time.”
‘A win and a loss’
While there were too many missteps in the eyes of powerful Democratic figures to keep him in the 2024 race, Biden did score some wins that could contribute to a more positive evaluation of his presidency down the road.
“Joe Biden is responsible for getting us through COVID — people are forgetting that. To me, Trump gets the credit for putting on the rocket docket the vaccines,” Perry said. “I give Biden credit for distribution of the vaccines. And he pushed hard on the infrastructure bill, and should get a lot of credit for something that was so needed.
“On the [COVID] stimulus money, I think he should get credit for that, even though some economists say that’s what fueled the flames of inflation — so it’s kind of a win and a loss,” Perry said. “But look, the economy is really strong. It’s the strongest economy in the world. So even if you say he’s to be blamed for putting too much [stimulus] money into the system, give the president credit for some of the things that got the economy back off of the ground.”
To that end, Biden recently told USA Today that during his post-election meeting with Trump at the White House, the incoming president — despite his campaign trail rhetoric — praised Biden’s actions to pump up the economy.
“These wins are not partisan. They are American,” Biden said Monday. “They benefit all Americans and reflect America’s endless capacity for leadership and reinvention.”
Over the course of his eventually scuttled reelection campaign, Biden tried hard to sell voters on a roaring economy — and while he was correct that the inflation rate had leveled out, prices of everyday items such as groceries did not come down. His campaign was slow to acknowledge still-high prices, reflecting a stubbornness that had led Biden to seek a second term.
“I think I would’ve beaten Trump, could’ve beaten Trump. And I think that Kamala could’ve beaten Trump, would’ve beaten Trump,” Biden told reporters Friday evening at the White House during an impromptu Q&A session. “I thought it was important to unify the party. And when the party was worried about whether or not I was going to be able to move, I thought, even though I thought I could win again, I thought it was better to unify the party.”
In what a senior White House aide said in a Friday evening email was his end-of-term news conference, Biden opted against giving even a lukewarm endorsement to Vice President Kamala Harris in the coming fight for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
“I think she’s competent to run again in four years. That will be a decision for her to make,” Biden said of his vice president who came up short against Trump in November after being forced into a truncated general election campaign.
When Biden leaves the White House next week, his party will be without an heir apparent nor a clear strategy to combat Trump. But the president contended Monday that won’t be the case for his successor.
“My administration is leaving the next administration with a very strong hand to play,” he said.
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