11 Historians Predict How Joe Biden Will Be Remembered

After decades of dreaming of the White House, for Joe Biden, the reality of his term in office must feel extremely bittersweet.

First, despite all the naysayers over the years, he finally won the presidency in 2020. Then, he secured major legislative victories like the Inflation Reduction Act and made history by appointing the first Black women to be vice president and to serve on the Supreme Court. But he also presided over a bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, rising concern over border security and stubbornly high inflation.

Overshadowing it all, at least for now, is his ejection from the 2024 campaign amid concerns of declining mental acuity — and then the election of Donald Trump, whom Biden had once defeated and dubbed a threat to American democracy.

Historians may reevaluate his legacy in the years to come, after achievements and failures alike are put in more context, not to mention what occurs in Trump’s second term. Will Biden ultimately be viewed as a uniquely poor one-term president, or will history be kinder to him with time?

To answer that question we asked a collection of historians to take a first pass at how American history books will describe the Biden presidency.

Here’s what they wrote.

‘A Tragic Element to Biden’s Presidency’

By Sean Wilentz

Sean Wilentz teaches at Princeton and is the author of several books, including The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln.

Few worthy one-term presidents get the praise that they deserve, unlike lousy one-term presidents like James Buchanan, who do get the obloquy that they deserve. For the moment and for some years to come, pundits and other pseudo-historians as well as some genuine historians will jump all over Joe Biden for his gaffes, his authentic policy debacles (chiefly the withdrawal from Afghanistan) and more, above all, maybe, his failure to keep his pledge as a transitional president. With any luck, Biden, like Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush before him, will eventually receive his due, for his large legislative achievements won with razor-thin congressional majorities, his guiding hand in bringing the economy out of its post-Covid torpor into a full recovery, and, even more, perhaps, his rallying of NATO to support Ukraine against Vladimir Putin’s vicious invasion.

Should the nation’s luck finally run out, though, he will be remembered very differently, as the last president who observed the rule of law and who stood proudly as the indispensable leader of what was once the free world. Either way, there will be a tragic element to Biden’s presidency. “To be Irish,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed, “is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.” Irish Joe Biden, who understood that fate all too well, at least tried as president to sustain the core liberal values to which he devoted his life’s work.

‘From the Role of Dragon Slayer to the Person Who Had Enabled the Dragon to Return’

BY TEVI TROY

Former White House aide Tevi Troy is a presidential historian and senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute.

Joe Biden entered the presidency after nearly half a century of wanting to be president. Although his party had only narrow margins in Congress, he pursued overly ambitious plans to reshape the American political system as FDR and LBJ had. Unfortunately for him, he lacked the majorities they had and in doing so appeared to overstep his mandate. Then, in one of history’s tragic ironies, by the time Biden got the role he had so long sought, he became manifestly too old for the role.

As the Biden presidency progressed, his advanced age made him vulnerable to a challenge from the very person he had vanquished to win the presidency, Donald Trump. Biden was forced out of the presidential race by his party before actually facing Trump, but the questions about his age had put the Democratic Party in a position where Biden had let the very person he took credit for defeating return to the presidency. In this way, Biden went from the role of dragon slayer to the person who had enabled the dragon to return.

‘The Most Radically Left-Wing and Polarizing Presidential Tenure in a Century’

BY Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson, a classical and military historian, is the Martin and Illie Anderson senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of The Second World Wars, and The End of Everything.

Joe Biden was nominated and elected as the most centrist of the 2020 Democratic field. He ostensibly was tasked to reunite the country and moderate the perceived extremism of his primary party rivals and the supposed upheavals of the prior Trump years. Instead, what followed was the most radically left-wing and polarizing presidential tenure in a century — initial hyperinflation, massive deficits, high interest rates, spiking crime, an open border, 10 million illegal entries, the Afghanistan debacle, two theater wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and a divisive “woke” agenda.

As Biden left office with 57 percent public disapproval, the media and leaks from his own staff suddenly confirmed that they had suppressed honest discussion about the president’s obvious and long-standing cognitive decline, a debility that had precipitated his historic forced withdrawal as the Democratic nominee, and fueled the comeback and eventual reelection of Donald Trump. Unlike Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who left their two terms with public approval, Biden’s four years were more unpopular and less successful than even those of a similar one-term Carter presidency.

‘Bringing Black Women into the Halls of Power’

BY Keisha N. Blain

Keisha N. Blain, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow and Class of 2022 Carnegie Fellow, is professor of Africana Studies and history at Brown University. She is the editor of Wake Up America: Black Women on the Future of Democracy.

President Joe Biden’s term in office resulted in tangible gains for many Americans through his pro-labor policies and his investments in infrastructure and manufacturing — to name a few. One of his most significant accomplishments was advancing Black women’s leadership opportunities. While Black women in the United States have a long and storied history of engaging in politics — even when they were barred from the vote — Biden’s term represented a high point in bringing Black women into the halls of power.

First, he heeded the advice of Black women organizers when he selected Kamala Harris as his running mate — the first Black woman and the first Asian American nominee for vice president on a major party ticket. He also appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. In addition, Biden appointed 39 other Black women to the federal judiciary — more than any previous president of the United States. And of his 235 appointments to the courts, an estimated 60 percent were people of color. In the executive branch of government, Biden placed Black women in visible positions of power, including Karine Jean-Pierre as press secretary and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as the United States ambassador to the United Nations. From leadership positions at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Council of Economic Advisers and the Office of Management and Budget, Biden ensured that highly accomplished Black women with a range of experience could serve in diverse leadership positions.

Far beyond symbolism, these choices signaled his deep commitment to building an inclusive and multiracial democracy. While these developments are noteworthy, the administration ultimately proved unable to mount the political capital necessary to solidify these gains against a wave of backlash and regression.

‘An Apt Symbol for an Entire Political Tradition in Desperate Need of Reinvention’

BY Geoffrey Kabaservice

Geoffrey Kabaservice is the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center in Washington, D.C., as well as the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party.

Historians relegated Joe Biden’s presidency to the margins. Such is the fate of nearly all one-term presidents, who tend to be seen as transitional figures at best. This particularly was the case for a president whose age and debilities severely limited his leadership capacity, and who was remembered mostly for his failure to prevent Donald Trump from reoccupying the White House.

But for some historians, Biden’s senescence was an irresistible metaphor for a Democratic Party that continued to think of itself as the rightful governing party long after it had forgotten how to govern. Biden’s party had lost the instinct for persuasion and compromise with potential partners in the Republican Party and even within its own ranks, which led to the downfall of its most ambitious plans for voting rights and green infrastructure. It no longer remembered why it was important to prioritize from among the competing claims of its constituent groups, which led to an excessively large stimulus bill as well as unfocused legislation (like the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act) that came with too many irrelevant requirements and veto points to be implemented. The political left allowed the institutions in its orbit — universities, the media, the bureaucracy, foundations, think tanks — to forget their foundational principles and purposes.

And while the Democratic Party continued to think of itself as the tribune of the working class, it lost touch with non-college-educated Americans of all races to such an extent that it failed to understand their concerns about inflation, public order, an insecure border and an elite enamored with radical and deeply unpopular theories of race and gender. The public’s turn toward Trump’s authoritarian populism may have felt like an excessive and indeed disastrous response to Democratic failures, but Biden’s exhaustion remained an apt symbol for an entire political tradition in desperate need of reinvention and renewal.

‘The Absence of Disaster Is Not a Major Achievement’

BY ELIZABETH COBBS

Elizabeth Cobbs is the Dwight Stanford Emerita Professor at San Diego State University, and author most recently of Fearless Women: Feminist Patriots from Abigail Adams to Beyoncé.

Presidential historians rank Joseph Biden “average” for steering the nation around the classic hazards that buried previous American leaders or catapulted them to fame: sticky foreign interventions, violent domestic unrest or economic collapse. The stock market recovery that began with Barack Obama and continued through Donald Trump remained steady under Biden, who invested in long-term infrastructure, initiated strong measures against climate disaster, mended fences with allies, bolstered Ukraine and kept the nation from war.

Historians debate whether Biden contributed much that was innovative, to which some reply that he chose the first female vice president in 240 years. Others laud him precisely for being “a regular Joe.” Calm rather than dramatic, his administration endured few lawsuits, no impeachments and minimal turnover in contrast with predecessor Trump, whose volatile administration was awash with all three. The absence of disaster is not a major achievement, though, and Biden failed to restore the bipartisan unity he sought and the nation needed — undone partly by the proliferation of social media conglomerates unchecked by libel law.

The 46th president’s greatest mistake? Not knowing when to quit. Biden ran for an unanticipated second term despite widespread concerns about his age, then reversed himself too late to allow for a primary. At the end, the process was hardly regular and certainly disadvantaged his proposed successor.

‘Biden Did Not Serve as President in Traditional Times’

BY SARAH IGO

Sarah Igo is the Andrew Jackson Professor of American History at Vanderbilt University.

The evaluation of a U.S. presidency traditionally hinges on promises and reversals, accomplishments and failures, in domestic and foreign policy. In Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s case, it would encompass, on the home front, his concerted work to stem the Covid-19 pandemic and his ambitious, New Deal-inflected infrastructure and economic policies — but also the politically debilitating inflation that helped doom his party’s chances in the 2024 election. On the world stage, it would weigh Biden’s successful rallying of Western nations in support of Ukraine and apparent clinching of a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas in his twilight hours as commander-in-chief against the disastrous pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and failure to prevent the massive death toll in Gaza.

But Biden did not serve as president in traditional times. His single term in office was instead burdened from the start by urgent and still unanswered questions about the fate of America’s democratic institutions. And so the measure and meaning of his presidency lie elsewhere: in Biden’s inability to staunch, or even slow, the rise of a chaotic, norm-shattering and authoritarian-leaning politics embodied by the man who would both precede and succeed him in office.

‘The Most Successful One-Term President in American History’

BY Kenneth W. Mack

Kenneth W. Mack is the inaugural Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of History at Harvard University.

Joe Biden faced a set of nearly unique challenges as president. When he first ran for office in 1988, he had been trying to become the second-youngest person to be elected president, but he would take office in 2021 as the oldest — at least until his successor was inaugurated. As president, he pushed forward with a historic set of legislative achievements and administrative actions that responded to the unprecedented problems of a new era: economic inequality, climate change, a global pandemic, deindustrialization, artificial intelligence, tech monopolies, border security, the erosion of democratic norms, renewed debates over race, gender, immigration and LGBTQ issues, as well as a predecessor who tried to remain in office unlawfully and through the encouragement of a violent insurrection.

Biden pushed for the selection of unprecedented numbers of women and minorities to the federal bench and high-level federal positions, including his vice president, Kamala Harris, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. He also promoted policies to benefit the working class and economically disadvantaged, such as his administration’s industrial policies and its aggressive promotion of health insurance under Obamacare, both of which often disproportionately benefited economically-marginal, Republican-leaning areas. He broke decisively with the neoliberal policies that had dominated Democratic politics for a generation. He accepted the popularity of tariffs and national competition as the basis of the American relationship with China, while countering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and finally bringing home American forces from their failed mission in Afghanistan.

In the end, Biden’s popularity was undone by surging inflation and illegal border crossings, the fall of the Afghan government, concerns about his age which multiplied after a disastrous presidential debate performance, and a continued sense of economic uncertainty among the populace. Some critics thought that he had undermined the American justice system by granting a broad presidential pardon to his son, Hunter. However, given his accomplishments in the face of these unprecedented challenges, there is a case to be made for Biden as the most successful one-term president in American history. If he’d been a bit younger or perhaps a bit luckier, he might have had two.

‘A Failed Presidency’

BY Donald T. Critchlow

Donald T. Critchlow is a Professor of History and Director of the Center for American Institutions at Arizona State University.

Joe Biden stepped into the White House promising to unify the country. He hoped of being a transformational president. Yet he left office compared to the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter. Much of Carter’s perceived failure had to do with circumstances beyond his control such as the Iranian hostage crisis. Biden’s failure was a direct reflection of his open-door immigration policy on the southern border, his order to withdraw U.S. military forces from Afghanistan and continued inflation, which the administration claimed to be either transitory or misperceived by the voters. These failures were combined with a public perception of a decline in Biden’s mental acuity.

Any claim to legislative success early in his administration with the enactment of the poorly named Inflation Reduction Act and the Build Back Better Act were belied by the Federal Reserve assessments that these acts contributed to growing inflation. His highly politicized domestic agenda and hyper-partisan political rhetoric only further divided the country. History reevaluates presidencies, as in the case of Dwight D. Eisenhower, but the disconnect between Biden’s campaign promises and the actual results of his administration suggests a continued judgment of a failed presidency.

‘In Some Ways It Was the Best of Times’

BY NOLIWE ROOKS

Noliwe Rooks is a professor and department chair at Brown University and is the author of six books, including the forthcoming Integrated: How American Schools Failed Black Children.

In assessing the four years of the Biden presidency relative to education, in some ways it was the best of times. His administration forgave the debt of over 5 million student borrowers and provided $17 billion in support to historically Black colleges — a figure far surpassing the amount of support offered by other administrations. And he helped to steady public schools all over the country that were just coming out of the school closures caused by the pandemic, providing a $122 billion dollar lifeline through the American Rescue Plan Act, money primarily directed to schools that needed to upgrade infrastructure and provide social service supports for the most vulnerable and hardest-hit learners.

But, also during his administration, according to the National Illiteracy Institute, almost 67 percent of fourth graders and 69 percent of eighth graders read below rates considered proficient. In some states, like California, 75 percent of Black boys have reading scores so low they are considered illiterate. The ability to read is linked to higher voter turnout rates, higher rates of employment — and the ability to exist above the poverty line. College professors all over the country report that higher percentages of our students show up in class not having read an entire book during high school. By any measure, these rates and numbers constitute the worst of times, and the silence from the Biden administration about them is simply perplexing.

‘Joe Biden’s Leadership Was Transformative’

BY Judy Tzu-Chun Wu

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, co-author of Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress (2022), is Chancellor’s Professor of History and Asian American Studies and Associate Dean in the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine.

Joe Biden’s leadership was transformative. He pledged to appoint the most diverse Cabinet, with record numbers of women and people of color, and he followed through by appointing people like Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native woman appointed to the presidential cabinet. Under Haaland, the Biden administration announced efforts to recognize women, particularly underrepresented women in U.S. history, through an initiative to preserve commemorative spaces through the National Park Service. He also appointed acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, a Chinese American woman and a long-committed and widely recognized advocate for labor.

As with any person in a position of power, there are complex legacies associated with Biden and those he elevated to positions of leadership. But for many women at the time, witnessing such remarkable women in action offered hope. Biden made history by running with Kamala Harris. To paraphrase Harris, she may have been the first, but Biden made sure that she was not the only. Biden helped the U.S. understand that a fully realized democracy offers the possibility that people of diverse identities, experiences and values are not just tolerated or targeted, but also respected and honored.