Joe Biden did not simply alter his chances at winning a second term last night. He altered his legacy. It will remain forever changed, regardless of the outcome in November.
In 2020 Biden was chosen to be president — first by his party, then by the public — to take some toxicity and radicalism out of the debate. This center-left Democrat (or center-left compared to the rest of his party, at least) had a decades-long history of working with his Republican counterparts. He had the once common, now miraculous, ability to get along with (and even on occasion praise) politicians outside of his own party.
Voters liked it. He trumped Bernie Sanders’s socialist agenda in the primaries; he weathered Trump’s rage on the national stage. The president-elect was sent to Washington, DC with more votes behind him than any other presidential candidate in history, and he used that mandate to talk about unification — a forgotten concept during the previous four years.
The strong implication during that campaign, and indeed at the start of Biden’s first term, was that he would act as a caretaker president. Biden was billed as the transition leader: ushering America from politically toxic times to something resembling what voters remembered as normal.
His age and ability were already a problem in 2020. That was a risk voters were willing to take (though not without reservations, especially as they got more familiar with their country’s vice president). Asking them to take that risk again was always going to be a tough sell, even if the president hadn’t aged a day since the last presidential race. Last night’s debate made painstakingly clear the extent to which that is not the case. Biden could not follow his own thoughts. He could not finish his sentences. Attempts to land his points resulted in rambling — at times very uncomfortable rambling, especially when he strayed into talking about assault on women and girls.
But most worryingly, he showed that he is no longer capable of delivering the big thing that got him elected in the first place: holding toxicity to account. Biden could not debate Trump. He couldn’t engage with his points or call out his exaggerations. Back in the 2020 debates, it was Trump’s rash and belligerent debating style that made discussion impossible (I believe it was these moments that lost Trump the election). This time, Biden’s inability to properly engage that meant there was no meaningful discussion to be had. It was a dereliction of duty, a danger to the democratic process.
Americans should have never been asked to make the choice that was presented to them on the stage last night. Biden’s better-than-expected performances in the midterm elections in 2022 led to the false (and hubristic) belief that these results were a personal mandate for the president, rather than the American people, once again, pushing back on gung-ho MAGA candidates. The outcome convinced the president to double down on Bidenomics and to double down on the idea of a second term — despite Americans being largely unconvinced by either.
And he did so despite clearly not being up to the challenge. Having staked a presidential legacy on ending the Trump era, his insistence on being the Democrat candidate makes it far more likely that Trump will return.
Most mainstream Republican candidates could have beaten Biden comfortably. A more able Democrat candidate would have better taken on Trump. In either scenario, the country would have been moving on — as was Biden’s great promise. Now it is a country seemingly stuck in time. America isn’t really stuck, of course: last night proved things can always get worse.
Biden could have left office having delivered the great gift of political peace. Instead, last night’s debate revealed that he is the type of politician who clings desperately to power, regardless of the consequences.
This changed legacy will stick, no matter what happens on election day.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
