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As President Joe Biden exits the world stage, the question of what his legacy will be after nearly 50 years in elected office looms.
Biden’s four years as commander-in-chief were bookended by the coronavirus pandemic and concerns about his old age forcing him out of a reelection bid. In between, he managed to get major pieces of legislation through a bitterly divided Congress.
“It was long past time for America to make a generational investment in our infrastructure, in our manufacturing base, in the technological edge, in our clean energy future,” Biden said earlier this month during a speech at the Brookings Institution.
Biden is hoping that Americans will remember him for the significant laws he was able to get passed. His record includes a sweeping coronavirus relief package, a once-in-a-generation infrastructure deal, the first gun safety legislation in decades, a huge investment in building computer chips in America, and an enormous climate, health care and tax package.
Historians such as Michael Genovese of Loyola Marymount University say part of Biden’s legacy is that his 36 years in the Senate and eight years as vice president helped mold him into a dealmaker-in-chief.
“He was deeply enmeshed in the process and he knew all of the players. And he was able to use that to an extent to realize how to move the pieces on the chessboard,” Genovese said.
He said much of what Biden accomplished will take years to implement, so he may not be getting full credit for it now. But Genovese said Biden’s mishandling of his age and reelection bid will also leave a mark.
“While his great success in 2020 was that he got Donald Trump out of office, his failure this past year has been Donald Trump was able to get back into office,” Genovese said.
President-elect Donald Trump will return to the Oval Office in January and he has long promised to try to undo as much of Biden’s legislative record as possible.
“It actually sets us back, as opposed to moves us forward,” Trump said during an Economic Club of New York speech in September.
When it comes to Biden cementing his legacy, University of Pennsylvania historian Mary Frances Berry said time will tell how well Biden and his team messaged his accomplishments to the American people, even if Trump rolls parts of them back.
“If a president and his staff — because it’s always staff — do that kind of planning and bring the public along, they get credit,” Berry said.
Michael LaRosa, who worked in the Biden White House as a spokesperson for the first lady, thinks Biden’s record will be viewed more favorably over time and be seen as having made the country better.
“I think what’s been left out of a lot of the conversations over President Biden’s legacy is the context in which he inherited the country,” LaRosa said.
But LaRosa acknowledged the 82-year-old Biden’s decline has become part of his story.
“There’s no doubt that the decisions and the controversies of the last year are going to, in the near term, have an impact on his legacy,” LaRosa said.
The historians Spectrum News spoke with said that in the long term, presidents are rated more on their accomplishments than flashy moments or scandals.
Biden’s age, or his recent decision to pardon his son Hunter, will remain part of the story, but they said his legislative record was surprisingly successful.
