WASHINGTON — Joe Biden, now president-interim, has no real hope of getting a divided Congress to pass half-baked pieces of his agenda.
But what the president can do in his remaining months in office may be more important to preserving America’s democratic traditions: Stop Donald Trump from returning to power, the president suggested in a speech in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
“Nothing,” Biden said, “is going to stand in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So I decided the best way was to pass the torch to a new generation.”
Biden has left it up to his vice president, Kamala Harris, to defeat Trump. He bowed to political reality, declining his re-election bid, acknowledging that the younger, more energetic Harris might have a better chance in November.
But historians say Biden’s legacy rests on the outcome of the election, even if he is no longer on the ballot. They said Biden needed a Harris victory to secure his place in history because he prided himself on hard-won legislation aimed at improving roads and bridges.
“People don’t go to presidential libraries to see the pen used to sign the infrastructure act under glass,” Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University, said in an interview.
“If Harris loses, it will mean that Biden’s greatest achievement in history — defeating Trumpism in 2020 — is only a brief moment in time.”
Biden has given few hints about the policies he will champion during his last six months in office. In his speech, announcing his decision to withdraw from education, he said that he would file a lawsuit Supreme Court judges are responsible Ending their lifetime powers and working to keep them ethical.
He said he would speak out against gun violence and work to protect both voting and abortion rights.
But as his term ends, the election will influence much of what he says and does. Harris’ top aides attend important staff meetings in the West Wing, keeping the two camps running in sync.
White House aides said Biden could help his chosen successor by using his powerful megaphone to tout economic policies that voters like and Republicans oppose.
For example, aides said White House officials will emphasize that corporations bear a higher tax burden and that Trump-era tax cuts for individuals making more than $400,000 a year should be allowed to expire in 2025.
For Harris, campaigning directly is a riskier proposition. Only 36% have a favorable opinion of Biden a recent NBC News poll, decreased by 50% in the first months of his tenure.
Still, a sitting president is usually a fundraising draw, and Biden, while not particularly useful in battleground states, could help attract donors to the newly-elected Democratic front-runner for the nomination.
“This will be Biden’s most important accomplishment: making sure that the torch is not only passed, but used to ignite the Trump campaign’s chance to take back the White House,” said Mark Updegrove, president of the LBJ Foundation and author. consists of five books on the presidency.
Lame-duck presidents act differently depending on their preferences and the political circumstances they face.
In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, also refused to run for re-election, fearing defeat. He did, however, pass landmark gun control legislation in the last three months of his term, defeating Martin Luther King Jr. that year. and captured the public’s shock during the Bobby Kennedy assassinations.
Nearing the end of his second term, Barack Obama asked his staff to “go through the tape”. He didn’t want them to give up before handing the White House to Trump in 2017.
Denying defeat in 2020, Trump has spent much of the post-election period trying unsuccessfully to reverse the outcome and stay in power.
“You can’t ignore January 6 and the events around it to come to this conclusion [Trump] “is a person who does not believe in democracy,” said Updegrove, “Democracy is the backbone of the American system. You heard a lot from Trump during the election campaign that if you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country. Well, if you don’t have liberal democracy, you don’t have a country. That’s the essence of who we are.”
House Republicans and Biden aides do not expect any major legislative breakthroughs for the remainder of the term.
The president enjoys a wider range of opportunities in the realm of foreign policy, and before leaving, Biden tried to make his mark on the world stage.
He wants to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza, a goal that has eluded him as Israeli officials squeeze and squeeze Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has already held at least two meetings with staff members, reminding them that there is still a lot of unfinished business.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Biden at the White House on Thursday. The president will attend the UN General Assembly in September, and he wants to see a resolution to the war between Ukraine and Russia that preserves Ukraine’s independence and territory.
Aides do not expect a wave of White House departures in the coming months. Biden may be harsh with staff, but he instills a certain loyalty that tends to keep them in his orbit.
A White House official who plans to stay until the end describes how Biden tried to comfort him when his brother died of cancer this year.
As the official prepared to attend a meeting with the president, an aide told him to wait in the private dining room outside the Oval Office. Biden entered the room and hugged the official. He spoke about the love between the brothers and how his son Hunter felt when his brother Beau died of cancer in 2015.
Biden also asked about his friend’s other brother, who had the same type of brain cancer that killed Beau Biden.
“Tell you, tears were falling down his face,” the official said. “He is the man. He feels deeply. I have a deep personal love for him.”