Still stinging from the election, President Biden is pushing for his final priorities but has absented himself from the national conversation about Donald Trump after warning repeatedly that he was a threat to American democracy.
It was a long day in Angola. President Joe Biden had already visited a port facility bracketed with cranes and toured a factory filled with conveyor belts. So by the time he sat down at a large wooden circular table in a warm, stuffy room with African leaders, he put his head in his hand and briefly closed his eyes as the speeches droned on.
Flying across the world would have tired even a President younger than 82. But the point, as he saw it, was that he came. He travelled thousands of miles to highlight a new US-backed railway that could transform the economies of Africa and supply resources for America. He came. He did not have to. He insisted on it and was proud to be the first President to come.
This is the twilight of Biden’s presidency, the final days of the final chapter of an epic half-century political journey that has had more than its share of twists and turns. Time is catching up with Biden. He looks a little older and a little slower with each passing day. Aides say he remains plenty sharp in the Situation Room, calling world leaders to broker a ceasefire in Lebanon or deal with the chaos of Syria’s rebellion. But it is hard to imagine that he seriously thought he could do the world’s most stressful job for another four years.
That does not make it any easier as Biden heads towards the exit. Nothing that has happened since he was forced to drop out of the race in July has made that decision look wrong, yet Donald Trump’s victory over Vice-President Kamala Harris has been interpreted as a repudiation of Biden. It stung. It still stings. But unlike Trump four years ago, this President accepts the outcome.
“Yes, this is hard,” said Ted Kaufman, his longtime friend, aide and successor in the Senate. “But he has been through tougher things than this. He has a long list of things he wants to do, and he is focused on getting them accomplished.”
Determined to finish on a high note and shape his legacy as a consequential President, Biden wants to “sprint to the finish line” in these final weeks, as his chief of staff, Jeffrey D. Zients, put it. He is checking a few last boxes on his presidential bucket list. Angola? Check. A visit to the Amazon rainforest, another presidential first? Check.
The biggest box left is a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and if he manages that, it would be a validating triumph for a departing President. Otherwise, he is wrapping up his time in office by claiming credit for the healthy economy that he is turning over to his ungrateful successor and by getting money previously approved by Congress out the door for roads and bridges at home and arms for Ukraine abroad.
Tying a bow of forgiveness around his pending departure, Biden has extended a record number of commutations to prisoners who were already on home confinement – and more defiantly pardoned his son Hunter after convictions on firearms and tax charges, only to be surprised at the blowback from his fellow Democrats.
Like other lame-duck presidents, he is fading from the political scene, all but leaving the stage before the final curtain. While Trump already dominates the conversation more than incoming presidents typically do, making policy pronouncements and huddling with world leaders without waiting to take office, the President actually occupying the White House has become a national afterthought. “President – Still?” a host on Saturday Night Live referred to him.
Biden has absented himself from the debate convulsing the country. After warning again and again that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy, he has now gone silent on the matter and even aides decline to answer questions on whether the incoming President is still a danger. A traditionalist to his bones, Biden has opted for the grace and reticence he believes are befitting the departing President of a defeated party, even as the incoming President threatens to imprison opponents and tries to install conspiracy-minded acolytes in positions of power.
Some of Biden’s allies and fellow Democrats wish he would use his position more assertively in the time he has left.
“He ought to be dramatically pushing until the last day on the things that he represented to seal his legacy and the memory of it in the American public because it is so diametrically opposite to what Trump is bringing into the White House,” said the Reverend Al Sharpton, a civil rights leader and Biden ally.
Even when pushing for his priorities, Biden has found it hard to break through. During his visit to the Amazon rainforest last month, his fragility appeared painfully clear to those travelling with him.
After speaking for seven minutes on a day of draining humidity, a blue shirt hanging loosely over his frame, he turned to slowly shuffle away down a dirt path as several people in the audience not used to seeing him up close said they held their breath, worried that he would trip. (Aides said his gait was no more unsteady than usual.)
During an arrival ceremony on his trip to Angola this month, on the day after a long, tiring transoceanic flight that would have taxed any octogenarian, President João Lourenço suddenly clutched Biden’s arm to help guide him up a step.
When Biden visited the National Museum of Slavery that afternoon, he did not actually enter the main building to view the exhibitions; instead, artefacts were brought outside to show him, which two people familiar with the planning attributed to fear that the steep stairs would be too much of a challenge. (The White House denied that the stairs were a concern and said he was not brought inside for scheduling and logistical reasons.)
Yet Biden is still making those arduous journeys to far-off destinations like the Amazon and Angola when others might not have bothered. His meetings in Brazil forged international climate change commitments and his trip to Angola was meant to highlight a US-backed railway being built across the African continent, competing for influence with China, both major challenges of this era.
“It was a very important moment for me, for our institution,” said Vladimiro Fortuna, the director of the Angolan slavery museum. “That was a very important moment in the museum’s history.” He added that he was impressed by Biden and did not understand why there was so much concern about the stairs. “I didn’t see someone that was not ready to go up and to go in the museum.”
Several of those who travelled with Biden on those two trips took note that he maintained a light schedule at times and sometimes mumbled, making him hard to understand. With the end of his career in sight, he seemed ruminative. At one point, during a private meeting, he drifted into a reminiscence about the famous 1960 debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
At the same time, those accompanying him said, he was focused on the issues at hand and demonstrated command of the details. Before meeting with President Xi Jinping of China on the sidelines of a summit in Rio de Janeiro, he insisted on a prolonged briefing that stretched on for about 90 minutes.
In meetings at the White House, aides said, he is likewise still astute, still dictating specific actions and still editing speeches to suit his preferences. He made calls to other world leaders as part of a successful effort to broker a ceasefire to stop the war in Lebanon and again to consult on the aftermath of the fall of President Bashar Assad in Syria.
At a ceremony honouring the Special Olympics last week, he struck some guests as fully engaged. “He seemed fine,” said Elaine Kamarck, a longtime Democratic National Committee member who attended. “To my amazement, he stayed through the whole dinner. We all thought maybe he would disappear, but no, he sat down, he ate with everybody, he stayed through all of dinner. And he seemed just fine.”
Still, he grew emotional at one point during the ceremony. At this time of year, friends say, Biden can become a little seasonally depressed, remembering the 1972 car accident that killed his first wife and daughter shortly before Christmas. During his brief speech at the Special Olympics event, he brought up the tragedy and choked up for a few moments. On Wednesday, he will be in Wilmington, Delaware, for the anniversary, when he typically visits the family graves.
While some close to Biden said he had made peace with the coming end of his presidency, others said he had been moody. He is currently angry at Democratic members of Congress who have publicly denounced his decision to pardon Hunter Biden despite promises not to, according to one person who has spent time with him recently.
White House officials said that while Trump attracts the headlines, Biden and his staff are busy making sure money approved as part of his major legislation is spent as intended for clean energy, manufacturing and infrastructure projects before the next team can try to block it.
In a memo to the White House staff last week, Zients reported that the administration has announced awards for about 98% of the money made available through the end of the fiscal year from four major laws passed by Biden: the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
“The President has been very focused on how we implement these bills,” Natalie Quillian, the White House deputy chief of staff overseeing the process, said in an interview. “He’s impressed upon all of us that we need to run through the tape, we need to get the money out the door, we need to sign the contracts, and we need to get these impacts delivered to communities, red and blue, across the country as quickly as possible.”
Biden gave a “legacy speech” last week at the Brookings Institution outlining what he sees as the successes of his economic programme – and warning about the dangers of Trump’s. The roughly 40-minute speech, in the works for weeks, was meant to outline what Biden thinks worked in terms of the economy during his tenure and what will not work in the future, although he coughed throughout and was hoarse by the end.
“He’s not looking for a statue,” Jared Bernstein, the chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, said over the weekend. “He’s looking for a better policy that uplifts the middle class and steers us away from trickle down.”
At this stage of Biden’s presidency, though, his public messaging is targeted and restrained. Once Washington’s most loquacious chatterbox, Biden these days barely engages with the reporters who follow him everywhere. He has held no news conferences and conducted no interviews with the traditional news media since the election, though he has done some podcasts. His only reply to shouted questions from journalists during his entire Africa trip added up to 14 words. In South America, it was just a single word.
As a result, Biden has not once publicly addressed his much-criticised decision to pardon his son since the written statement he released, nor has he discussed his consideration of blanket pardons for adversaries of Trump to protect them from the President-elect’s promised campaign of “retribution” once he takes office.
At times, Biden bristles at the constraints. Before the election, when he had been relegated to the sidelines of the campaign, the President told an ally that he was bored and asked if there were any events for him to attend, a comment that seemed only partly facetious, according to a person informed about the conversation.
But his aides said there is plenty still left to do. In his memo, Zients pointed to the Gaza ceasefire talks, efforts to confirm more judges and plans to cancel more student debt for public service workers and other borrowers.
“During a time when most would expect us to slow down, you are accelerating,” Zients wrote, adding, “I know you and your teams are pushing forward on every issue, yard by yard.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Peter Baker and Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Photographs by: Tierney L. Cross, Anna Rose Layden and Eric Lee
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES