As Biden wraps up half-century political career, his failure to turn page on Trump weighs on president
President Biden’s half-century political career comes to a close on Monday, as President-elect Trump is inaugurated and succeeds Biden in the White House. While the longtime Democratic senator from Delaware, two-term vice president, and one-term president can point to a plethora of legislative victories and other achievements during his four years in the White House, Biden leaves office as one of the most unpopular presidents in the nation’s history.
Biden, who successfully defeated Trump in the 2020 election as he pledged to turn a page on his predecessor, is facing a legacy tarnished by his inability to prevent Trump from returning to the presidency. In an open letter to the American people, Biden appeared to acknowledge that he wasn’t able to follow through on the integral pledge from his 2020 campaign.
“I ran for president because I believed that the soul of America was at stake. The very nature of who we are was at stake,” Biden wrote. But he lamented that “that’s still the case.”
President Biden ran on and was elected on a platform of a return to normalcy in 2020. And while voters appear to have wanted that in principle, history will remember Biden as having been unable to deliver on his promise, veteran political scientist Wayne Lesperance, the president of New England College, told Fox News.
Biden, in a farewell address to the nation this past week, aimed to cement his legacy as a president who pushed to stabilize politics at home while bolstering America’s leadership abroad. He steered the nation out of the COVID-19 pandemic, made historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy, pumped up the economy, made historic gains in job creation, and lowered prescription drug prices for millions of Americans.
But he also used his speech to warn the country that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy. Our basic rights, freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”
Biden ends his single term in the White House with approval ratings that remain well underwater. He stood at 42% approval and 57% disapproval in the latest Fox News national poll. Just 36% of Americans approved of the job Biden has been doing in the White House, according to the latest CNN poll.
Biden’s approval rating stood at 43% – slightly higher but still in negative territory – in national polls by USA Today/Suffolk University and Marist College. All of the polls were conducted in early and mid-January.
Biden’s approval ratings slipped underwater in the autumn of 2021 and never reemerged into positive territory. The latest polls also indicate that many Americans view Biden’s presidency as a failure. Sixty-one percent of adults nationwide questioned in the CNN survey said they see Biden’s presidency overall as a failure, with 38% viewing it as a success.
According to the USA Today/Suffolk University survey, 44% of registered voters said history will assess Biden as a failed president, with 27% saying he will be judged as a fair president. Twenty-one percent of those questioned said history will view Biden as a good president, with only 5% saying he will be seen as a great president.
Biden, in one of his last interviews in office, told MSNBC in an acknowledgment of regret that “ironically, I almost spent too much time on the policy, not enough time on the politics.”
Also weighing on Biden’s legacy – his ill-fated re-election run. In April 2023, the then-80-year old Biden announced his re-election bid. Fourteen months later, Biden was losing ground to Trump in 2024 election polling when he suffered a disastrous debate performance against the former president, which reignited deep concerns among voters over his physical and cognitive ability to handle another four years in the White House.
Less than a month later, following an outcry from fellow Democrats, Biden announced he was ending his campaign and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to serve as the party’s 2024 standard-bearer. Two and a half months after Trump’s convincing victory over Harris, Biden is still facing plenty of blame for the Democrats’ electoral setbacks in November.
Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville told Fox News that “the Joe Biden story is one of the great tragedies of American politics. He should be having a glorious, well-deserved, highly acclaimed retirement. And he’s not.”
Biden’s friends and supporters feel that the negative views of the soon-to-be former president will shift over time. John MacNeil, a longtime Democratic consultant and Biden supporter, told Fox News, “Biden, because of some of the legislation that he was able to muscle through, is going to look pretty good. The fruits of some of what Biden accomplished are only going to become visible over the next few years.”
But MacNeil also acknowledged that Biden may be “seen as just a hiccup between Trump one and Trump two. That is something that historians will talk about.”
