President Joe Biden begins a new phase of his presidency this week.
Freed from limitations re-election campaignhe is in the early stages of a strategy that will take him to places at home and abroad over the next five months to ignore him as a 2024 candidate, but to keep him The White Househis legacy and some of his most significant achievements are provided.
On Thursday, Biden heads to a small town in a southwest Wisconsin county that voted reliably Democratic for two decades until former President Donald Trump carried it twice. Biden will make more trips to Republican-leaning districts and even red states to argue that his agenda also benefits those who voted against him, according to many Biden advisers.
Aides are also reallocating Biden’s time away from domestic policy to focus on foreign policy, with plans for an international farewell tour in October that could include a long-promised trip to Africa.
“The schedule is going to be tight and he plans to leave it all on the field,” White House communications director Ben LaBolt said.
Biden enters the twilight of his presidency with little precedent to guide him. Re-elected presidents enter second terms knowing they have years to begin shaping their legacies. On the other hand, recent one-term presidents fought to stay in office until their final weeks.
Still, one senior Biden adviser noted that the president has been mindful of the weight of history since he first entered the Oval Office, weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and amid public health and economic crises.
“It always has been because the stakes have been so high,” the consultant said.
Still, aides to the president said a new approach was needed after Biden made a back-and-forth decision in late July to end his run for a second term and endorse Vice President Kamala. Harris will replace him on the Democratic ticket. One of Biden’s first instructions after bowing out was to chief of staff Jeff Zients that he wanted his final 180 days in the Oval Office to be as consistent as any previous similar period in his tenure.
In general, this meant implementing the basics of his legislative record—infrastructure investments, increased manufacturing, climate change initiatives, and expanded care for veterans—while looking to lay the groundwork for the president’s unrealized and even new policy ideas that would potentially provide an opportunity. The Harris administration was on the run.
Zients then began working with other top advisers to develop a special action plan, the first outlines of which were presented to Biden on August 19 when he embarked on a two-week bicoastal vacation after his farewell address to the Democratic National Committee. Biden’s aides said.
Advisers said it focuses on four goals: finding new ways to increase investment in US infrastructure; cost reductions for Americans; protecting the freedoms the president believes are under siege; and strengthening US alliances to address global challenges.
Each aims to burnish Biden’s legacy, but the president’s aides have said they will help build a case against Trump because they hope it will help Harris’ campaign.
“Good governance is a way to show contrast,” said one official.
Biden’s team is in regular contact with the Harris campaign operation — an adviser notes that they are largely built to ensure the president’s actions are beneficial, Biden aides said. The goal, they said, is for Biden to move “surgically” and campaign where his departure is “strategically effective,” as one of them put it.
The plan, aides said, is for Biden to focus on constituencies he appeals to, such as upper-class voters and blue-collar workers.
The Biden official also argued that the president’s record continues to be popular among Democrats. “It’s not like 2008,” then-President George W. Bush officially remarked as he prepared to leave office with approval ratings as low as the 20% range and an economy in freefall.
Much of Biden’s domestic travel will be under the guise of official administration work, such as his planned stops in Wisconsin and Michigan on Thursday and Friday.
Biden is expected to travel extensively abroad, including after the annual meeting of world leaders in New York for the United Nations General Assembly in October, according to two senior administration officials and two former senior US officials familiar with the plans.
Officials say Germany and at least one stop in sub-Saharan Africa are among the possible countries he could visit in October as he is in the heat of his presidential campaign.
None of the ideas being discussed have been finalized on the president’s schedule, one senior administration official added: “The team is putting options together.”
Officials said Biden plans to travel to Brazil for the Group of 20 summit and Peru for a gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders. Biden plans to hold high-level meetings with key world leaders, including at the UN General Assembly later this month and a potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 in November, officials said.
After dropping out of the 2024 race, Biden has more time than planned to devote to foreign policy issues than he had planned, officials said, when they thought his top aides would campaign non-stop for re-election.
According to White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett, his foreign policy agenda has been very full in recent months.
Now he can spend longer on the phone with world leaders, extending calls previously limited by a tighter schedule. A Biden aide said that in recent conversations, the president mentioned to his colleagues that he was looking forward to seeing them again before he leaves office and even joked about how much free time he has on his hands.
While Biden’s goals for his final months in office have been set, specific plans beyond September are subject to change, with aides noting that a presidency naturally comes with unprecedented events.
His role in the election campaign will not be as strong as that of outgoing President Barack Obama eight years ago for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. This included regular campaign events in battlegrounds, including a large, closing joint rally in Philadelphia.
But Biden’s aides pointed to the president’s Monday event in Pittsburgh as a sign of what they believe he can do for Harris, vouching for his character and his commitment to supporting the working- and middle-class voters he has long considered his political base.
“We can help make the case, we can make the case for him the way we did for President Obama as vice president, and the same way Vice President Harris can help us win in 2020,” the Biden adviser said.
At a White House event on Tuesday, Biden said he would be “talking to Americans across the country about the progress we’re seeing in their communities” in the coming weeks. He also said that he wants to spend his last months there.
“I won’t be at the White House long, but you should come see me,” Biden told four local officials who attended the event virtually on Tuesday.