"Politics," it has often been said, "is the art of the possible." It is, to crib another famous phrase, a constant tension between campaigning in poetry, while governing in prose — and perhaps nowhere more so than in the White House, where a president's every action (and inaction) is scrutinized for signs of deeper significance and political import.
For former President Joe Biden, the dissonance between promise and accomplishment seemed particularly stark; elected as a change agent who would restore normalcy after the first Trump administration, Biden's tenure was marked by a constant struggle between the oftentimes contradictory inclinations to project a sense of business as usual, while at the same time unveiling objectively historic policy initiatives and acts — particularly as part of a national recovery effort during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Despite having a "lot of things to tout," the Biden administration's triumphs have "not penetrated the American public," NBC's Chuck Todd said at the halfway point of Biden's term. It's a sentiment that seemed to dog the President up to and beyond the Democrats' electoral loss in 2024. But public perception notwithstanding, the Biden White House was not the den of do-nothingness that its detractors might have you believe.
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Isn't it the economy, stupid?
Longtime Democratic election strategist James Carville's oft-repeated (and frequently parodied) aphorism became political shorthand for why Biden's list of economic accomplishments has hardly seemed to move the needle in his administration's favor. Indeed, on the economic front, the Biden White House has notched a number of historic victories, particularly when it comes to adding jobs to the U.S. economy. In his first year in office, employers added 6.6 million jobs, an all-time record, per CNN, for a president's initial 12 months in office. In January 2023, the country's unemployment rate dropped to its lowest point in more than half a century.
In spite of Biden's robust gains, public sentiment around the administration's economic achievements has ranged from underwhelming to overt hostility. A suite of mid-term polls from both the Post/ABC News and Fox News show Biden's economic approval well below his general approval score, while more than half disapproved of his handling of the economy, per a February 2023 CBS News survey. The disparity was likely the result of an "ongoing focus on inflation" rather than the complete — and much more optimistic — economic picture, according to Yahoo's Ben Werschkul.
OK, but what about inflation?
Despite taking a significant polling hit over weakening purchasing power, the Biden administration succeeded in addressing the country's growing inflation, most pointedly with the $750 billion 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. All told, the bill represents "one of the most significant laws in our history," Biden said during its signing ceremony. After some noticeable delay, it seems the effects of the bill are starting to make their presence known: "hourly wage increases exceeded inflation for the first time in two years" last summer, The New Republic said the following September. Similarly, The White House's late-August 2023 release of the first 10 drugs that will qualify for Medicare price negotiations marked a major step forward in a long-awaited democratic priority, "with the new prices taking effect in 2026," said The New York Times.
Taken in total, under the Biden administration inflation "cooled" and economic growth was "strong, though job gains are slowing," the Times said in the waning days of the 2024 election.
Planes, trains and automobiles?
During the first Trump administration, the phrase "infrastructure week" became something of a running joke thanks to the many, many unfulfilled promises to roll out a comprehensive plan addressing the nation's aging bridges, highways and beyond. Less than one year into his term, Biden signed a $1.2 trillion dollar bipartisan infrastructure package into law, the effects of which began to be felt some three years later — just in time for Donald Trump's return to power.
Guns, too?
As a candidate in 2020, Biden campaigned on the promise of sweeping gun control legislation akin to that passed under Bill Clinton in 1994. As president, however, Biden's ambitions to curb firearm violence were trimmed considerably. By the time he signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in June 2022, it had been stripped of the assault weapons ban, high capacity magazine ban and universal background checks that he had discussed on the campaign trail. Nevertheless, the bill — the first major federal firearms legislation since the '90s — was hailed as both a bipartisan victory (14 House Republicans supported it) and a significant step forward for the long-stagnant push for tighter gun laws.
Although the bill "doesn't do everything I want," Biden said during the signing ceremony, "it does include actions I've long called for that are going to save lives." Among those actions were increased funding for mental health programs and school security, as well as legislative measures to close the so-called "boyfriend loophole" and expanded background checks for certain types of prospective gun buyers.
Reshaping the judiciary
Capitalizing on Democrats' then-Senate majority, the Biden White House prioritized judiciary reform as a major feature of his administration. As noted by ABC News, the administration outpaced its three predecessors by placing more than 100 new judges — many of them women and/or people of color — on the bench at both the appellate and, in the case of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court level.
He walks the line
While Biden touted himself as "the most pro-union president In American history," his executive track record when it comes to labor organizing left many in his base underwhelmed, particularly in 2022 after he helped avert a major railway workers strike over the objections of workers and progressive lawmakers alike. Nearly a year later, though, Biden made history as the first sitting president to walk a picket line, when he joined striking United Auto Workers Local 174 in Belleville, Michigan, in September 2023. "The middle class built the country," Biden said to the striking workers, adding that "unions built the middle class."
Ukraine and Russia
Internationally, the bulk of Biden's focus was on supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia's years-long invasion attempt, both in terms of providing continual military aid and spearheading a broader coalition of multinational support. Biden "deserves enormous credit for the consistency and scale of U.S. and allied support for Ukraine since Russian leader Vladimir Putin's February 2022 full-scale invasion, without which Kyiv might already be lost," The Atlantic Council said. In no small part thanks to his work supporting Ukraine, Biden "reestablished the United States' credentials as the world's leading democracy and reclaimed the nation's commitment to upholding a liberal international order," The Council on Foreign Relations said.
Even after ending his reelection campaign in the summer of 2024, Biden was able to celebrate "one of the most important breakthroughs of his time in office" for orchestrating an historically massive prisoner swap between the United States and Russia, Foreign Policy said. The swap was a "major diplomatic achievement and legacy-defining moment for President Joe Biden less than six months before he leaves office," CNN said.
So what did he leave undone?
Despite campaign promises in both 2020 and 2022 to codify federal abortion access ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Biden was unable to deliver legislative action to ensure access to reproductive healthcare, stymied, in part, by the 60-vote threshold in the Senate and the unwillingness from members of his own party to circumvent filibuster rules.
Biden also failed to deliver on his effort to deliver comprehensive immigration reform, which he had prioritized on his first day in office with the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, arguing during a February speech that "congressional Republicans have refused to consider my comprehensive plan."
Biden also conspicuously removed his campaign proposal for free community college from the massive spending bill (though he stressed at the time that he was "not going to give up on community colleges as long as I'm president"), and largely failed to stymie conservative lawmakers' efforts to link his administration to his son Hunter Biden's various business ventures, some of which may have run afoul of lobbying regulations.
Still, no matter what priorities the administration left unchecked, the president himself chose to focus on his wins. Asked after the 2022 midterms whether he planned to change tactics to convince the public that he had, contrary to popular sentiment, accomplished a lot, Biden said he would change "nothing, because they're just finding out what we're doing."
