Joe Biden is leaving the White House a deeply disliked and discredited figure, less popular than George W. Bush in 2008 and held in only slightly higher regard than Richard Nixon. Thanks (among other things) to Gaza, his de facto ejection from the 2024 election race and the trainwreck debate performance that precipitated it, the end of the Biden presidency was always going to be a downbeat and pitiful affair. Few even in his own party will miss him, and the return of Donald Trump effectively moots much of Bidenism’s stated raison d’etre. 

Still, Biden has known since last summer — far earlier than any of his peers in the one-term presidents club — that he would never have to run for office again. Since Kamala Harris’ defeat, he has also known that his successor will be someone both he and his party have frequently cast as a threat to American democracy itself. Given the circumstances, it would not have been unreasonable to expect the Biden administration to behave with renewed urgency in the weeks leading up to Trump’s inauguration. At bare minimum, it might at least have refrained from adding to its already lengthy roster of disgraces. But even that, it seems, was too much to ask. Far from offering any break from the ossified patterns that came to define the Biden presidency, the past several months have only underscored many of its worst and most indefensible elements. 

Few even in his own party will miss him.

To an even greater extent than before, Biden has been a listless and isolated figure — avoiding unscripted interactions with the press whenever he can, quick to anger and prone to bizarre tangents that sometimes seem completely disconnected from reality. Faced with a question about Havana syndrome this month, he inexplicably responded by sharing his thoughts on the influence of “ISIS theology” in today’s America. Appearing alongside California Gov. Gavin Newsom during a visit prompted by the state’s catastrophic wildfires, Biden segued abruptly from the subject of burning houses to announce, “The good news is, I’m a great-grandfather as of today.” Asked about his age during a scrum a few days earlier, he angrily snapped, “My being the oldest president — I know more world leaders than any one of you ever met in your whole goddamn life!” 

Evidently determined not to let his lame duck period go to waste, Biden opted to commute the sentence of former Pennsylvania judge Michael Conahan, who received millions in kickbacks for sending children to for-profit detention centers — an act so clearly indefensible it defies belief. He also pardoned his own son, despite incessantly promising not to do so. And despite some welcome clemencies for people convicted of nonviolent offences like drug possession, Biden ignored an appeal from some 34 members of Congress to pardon lawyer Steven Donziger — who has faced Kafkaesque persecution at the hands of the Chevron corporation for helping expose its destruction of the Amazon rainforest. 

For what it’s worth, the dying days of the Biden presidency have offered up a few welcome surprises. America’s cruel and damaging economic blockade of Cuba will unfortunately continue, but the country will no longer be designated a state sponsor of terrorism. In a move that could preempt at least some of Trump’s promised mass deportations, the administration extended the temporary status of nearly a million migrants. Biden also announced a fresh round of debt relief for roughly 150,000 student borrowers. A positive step to be sure, though also significantly less than what he originally promised to do. 

Elsewhere, Biden’s conduct made for pure self-parody. The late George Romney, father of Mitt, was among the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, alongside the also deceased Robert F. Kennedy. For her part, former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney (whose prominent role in the Kamala Harris campaign helped pave the way for Trump’s victory) was also given a medal, and none other than former Republican president George W. Bush now has a brand-new aircraft carrier named in his honor. 

Biden ignored an appeal from some 34 members of Congress to pardon lawyer Steven Donziger.

More substantively, Biden spent his final weeks in office doubling down on the chest-thumping militarism and unwavering support for Israel’s war crimes that came to define the last 18 months of his presidency. Denouncing the International Criminal Court for daring to issue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, his administration also sent them $8 billion worth of bombs, missiles and artillery as a parting gift. True to form, and despite his unrelenting deference to Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden disingenuously sought to take credit for the recently announced ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Similarly talking from both sides of his mouth, his penultimate speech paired the ludicrous claim that America is now a nation at peace with the boast that he has personally overseen some $1.3 trillion in military-industrial investment (“more,” in Biden’s words, “than America did in any four-year period during the Cold War”). 

In much the same vein, Biden used his last Oval Office address to warn of an “oligarchy taking shape in America,” defined by dangerous concentrations of “extreme wealth, power and influence” and a “tech-industrial complex” that increasingly threatens its democracy. On its face, the sentiment isn’t wrong. But coming from a politician who spent nearly 50 years dutifully serving the interests of organized wealth before aggressively courting them in his own bid for the White House, Biden’s words rang hollow — a fitting coda for the final, spluttering months of his fatally compromised presidency.

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