On the eve of President Joe Biden’s departure from the White House, we asked historian Douglas Brinkley for his assessment of our president: 

When President Richard Nixon died in 1994, most Americans came up with a word: Watergate. They didn’t think about the EPA, the important government firm created through Nixon. Nor did they think about China, a country he visited as president and with which he strengthened diplomatic relations. No, the country basically remembers him for his biggest political mistake.

It remains to be noted that Joe Biden will suffer the same fate.

His achievements are tangible and numerous. Affordable Care Act enrollment has nearly doubled from four years ago. Biden has landed more top federal judges than any president in a single term (with the exception of Jimmy Carter). His unwavering support for Ukraine and the expansion of NATO, at a time of growing autocracy in Europe was heroic.

But Biden’s mistakes cost him, and his country, dearly. He appointed an attorney general, Merrick Garland, whose painstaking scrupulousness delayed, and ultimately doomed, the DOJ’s prosecution of Donald Trump. Furthermore, Biden undermined his own credibility by pardoning his son after repeatedly vowing not to.

Another broken promise turned out to have far more serious consequences. Biden’s implicit promise in the 2020 election crusade that his presidency would serve as a “bridge” to a new generation of leaders rang hollow when he ran for reelection four years later. When he reluctantly handed over the reins to his vice president, Kamala Harris, he put her in an unpropitious position from which she has not recovered.

Biden’s confidence that he, and only he, will be able to defeat the guy he considered a risk to the democratic order is the very explanation for why that guy will get his hands on the Bible tomorrow.

During his 50 years of public service, Joe Biden has proven himself to be a patriot. But despite his fundamental decency, history would possibly single him out for some other trait: pride.

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      Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Karen Brenner. 

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