Joe Biden’s presidency is essentially over. In forty-eight hours, a little less, the United States will move into the Trump 2.0 era. We will then only keep, at best, a vague memory of the Democratic president, and at worst, we will hold him responsible for the storm that hit the United States.
For one last time in the four years of the Biden administration, I was on Friday the “foreign pooler”, the representative of the foreign press in the “pool”, the small group of journalists called upon to follow the president during the day. There was an end-of-reign atmosphere. A good dose of despondency was clearly perceptible in the president’s entourage.
Let there be no ambiguity, Joe Biden has had an impressive political career. He remained, through the inevitable compromises, a decent man. And no matter what Donald Trump says, he has been anything but a corrupt president.
However, he aged even faster than his four years in the White House. And nothing will illustrate this better than his disastrous performance during the June 27 presidential debate against Donald Trump. More than fifty million viewers saw their president search for words, get lost in his ideas and watch in death as his rival responded with much more vigor and aplomb.
Biden, a bridge rather than a wall
Joe Biden sealed his passage to the White House that evening. He never recovered. Although Kamala Harris tried, unsuccessfully, to salvage what she could of the Democratic campaign, Americans and the rest of the world will find themselves, on Monday and for four years, with Donald Trump and all that that implies at home. head of the United States.
Let’s not doubt it, the tragedies that are coming are Joe Biden’s fault! It would have been very different if he had remained true to the vision of himself that he expressed on March 9, 2020 at a political rally in Detroit. Surrounded by younger Democratic leaders – Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer – he described himself as “a bridge and nothing else” to a new generation of leaders.
-We might not be there
If he had stuck to just one term, this “new generation” could have sparked a major reflection on what the Democratic Party had to offer Americans. Potentially tough debates would have taken place, debates from which Kamala Harris would perhaps have emerged victorious, in any case, certainly, strengthened.
The Democratic presidential campaign would not have been botched as it ultimately was, painfully crashing last November 5 on Donald Trump’s electoral machine which had already been running for a good two years.
Joe Biden will leave the White House with the worst approval rating – 37% according to poll aggregators 538.com – of any recent president, except George W. Bush who left the country mired in two major wars. Biden will always be able to boast – he already does – of not having sent American soldiers to fight in dubious wars on the other side of the planet.
Except that to already imagine the field of ruins that his successor in the White House intends to make of his legacy, it is just as if Joe Biden himself emerged destroyed from a battle in which he should never have fought. ‘engage.
