(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA'S "TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)")
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Hey, there. It's the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
MCCAMMON: Today on the show, we're taking a look back at President Joe Biden's legacy as a political figure within the Democratic Party. Biden first made a name for himself back in 1972, then as one of the youngest people to be elected to the U.S. Senate. His career will end as the oldest person to ever serve as president of the United States.
Mara, Joe Biden has been a national political figure now for more than 20% of this country's entire history. That is just...
LIASSON: Wow (laughter).
MCCAMMON: ...An incredible amount of time.
LIASSON: Yeah.
MCCAMMON: And, you know, the country has seen a lot of change during Biden's time in office. His party, the Democratic Party, has also changed. I want to start there, Mara. Where is the party ideologically, as Biden leaves office?
LIASSON: Ideologically, I think the party is where it's always been - as the party that believes government can be used to help ordinary people. I think the party is much more diverse than when Biden started his career. It's interesting that a party that is this diverse has such an old white guy as the president. But, you know, the party has changed a lot since Biden got into office. And - you know what? - he's changed along with it.
MCCAMMON: And, Domenico, what about you? I mean, what stands out to you about how both Biden and his party have changed?
MONTANARO: Well, everything, right? I mean, this is a party that you could have seen in the 1990s or before that, you know, quote-unquote, pro-life Democrats, people who were against abortion rights. Joe Biden might have counted himself as somewhat adjacent in that category, as a staunch Catholic, saying that he wouldn't want someone to have an abortion, but he's not going to tell somebody else what to do. That is a far cry from where he is today, as somebody who feels like he's, you know, championed progressive causes, including women's reproductive rights. What has also kind of changed politically is Joe Biden is somebody who's always wanted to be a negotiator, find common ground with people. And we've seen much more - both parties kind of become more ideologically pure. Democrats certainly still more likely to want to compromise than Republicans are, but the party, the politics, all of it has really changed a lot.
MCCAMMON: And you know, Domenico, as you were talking there, I was just thinking about the ways that Biden, the country and his party have all changed. You mentioned abortion. I mean, he was sworn into the Senate just a couple of weeks, in January 1973, before the Roe vs. Wade decision was handed down, so he's spent most of his career in an environment where abortion was legal nationwide. We saw his position shift, in some ways, I think, very arguably, in response to pressure from his own party, from supporters who saw the country shifting, who saw the increasing threat to Roe, which obviously materialized as the overturning of Roe. During that time, he was under pressure to shore up his support for abortion rights and do more. So really, you know, you saw Biden changing as the country and the politics changed.
I want to focus, though, on one part of Biden's history that drew criticism from different flanks of his party decades ago. This was during his time as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, back when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. So, as many of us remember, Anita Hill, who worked under Thomas in different federal agencies, testified that Thomas had sexually harassed her. Mara, how did Biden handle that responsibility on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and how did he draw criticism for it?
LIASSON: Well, I think that Biden came off as somebody who didn't quite know what to do with the Anita Hill charges, and there was some backlash about that. And you could argue that the Anita Hill chapter, Biden's handling of those hearings, sparked what we called at the time the Year of the Woman. All of a sudden, a lot of women got politically active, ran for office, won seats, you know, whether they were in Congress or in the states, and Biden adjusted. You know, after that, he sponsored the Violence Against Women Act. So this story that we're telling here is about a party changing and a party's leader changing. And that's OK. You know, people who are ideologically rigid get left behind, but Joe Biden has tried to keep up with where his party is.
MCCAMMON: So how did that experience affect his larger role in the Democratic Party?
LIASSON: I think it just made him more sensitive to the base and to what Democratic voters wanted. That's how you saw him handle the primaries in 2020. Nobody thought that Joe Biden, who'd run for president twice before and lost, seemed like an old kind of guy from a different era, could be the nominee. But he figured out how to do it, and he made alliances with people like Jim Clyburn, the top African American leader of the Democrats in the House. So he's somebody who has changed along with his party.
MCCAMMON: So Biden thought for a long time about becoming president, right? This was sort of a dream of his for decades. And I want to go back to his first run for presidency, back in 1988. Domenico, that was not without criticism. Remind us a little bit about what that run for president was like.
MONTANARO: Yeah. You know, he was in his 40s, and he wound up having to bow out because of a plagiarism scandal. He essentially borrowed lines from a British lawmaker and used that in a speech and, you know, wound up being emblematic of sort of the Joe Biden undisciplined style, where, you know, he can get a little fast and loose with some things, despite the fact that there are a lot of, I think, things that Democrats would laud about Joe Biden and think of him as somebody who did do a lot of good things. But there are times when you just sit there and say, I'm puzzled by why he would say or do what he did.
LIASSON: He's a gaff machine, and he's admitted that about himself all along. Sometimes people just chuckle and say, oh, that's Joe, and other times it causes real political problems for him and his party.
MCCAMMON: Which again, I think, just speaks to the way that the politics of the country have changed, right? Joe Biden first ran for president at a time when something like a plagiarism scandal or a gaff that, by today's political standards, might be considered minor, was a big enough deal to sink a campaign.
MONTANARO: Well, I think it depends on which party you're talking about, because I think that some of those things would still matter in the Democratic Party. I think we're talking about Republicans, really, and because of Donald Trump and his multiple affairs, allegations of sexual misconduct, business fraudulent practices that he was convicted of - you know, all of those things are not things that are typical of any politician and may never be typical of another politician again.
MCCAMMON: OK, we're going to take a break, and when we come back, Joe Biden's renaissance.
And we're back. Biden again launched a run for the presidency in 2008, but that one also quickly fizzled. The eventual nominee that year, though, was, of course, Barack Obama, and he picked Biden to be his running mate, which was kind of a game changer for Biden. Domenico, what was Obama's reasoning there?
MONTANARO: You know, we talked about the long arc of Joe Biden's history. Well, Barack Obama didn't have much of an arc of political history when he ran. Barack Obama in 2004, you know, lit up the Democratic National Convention with an amazing speech and was able to, you know, capture kind of lightning in a bottle just four years later. And he needed somebody with some experience in Washington and what we would call here a graybeard. They got along, despite, as we talked about, Biden's gaffs. Biden calling Obama clean and articulate, talking about needing an Indian accent to go into a 7-Eleven - these are things he's said. And then Barack Obama put him on the ticket anyway, because he had that sort of grace for him and felt like he was somebody who could also appeal to sort of those union white dudes who Biden was able to win over in 2020. So it was really a legislative pick, a confident pick, and Biden did deliver, in a lot of instances because of his relationships on Capitol Hill, being able to get a lot of things passed with someone like Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, who'd been around almost as long as Joe Biden had been.
MCCAMMON: So that, in many ways, revitalized Biden's career. He's back in a big way at this point, of course, as vice president. Then, after a lot of speculation in 2016, Biden decided he would not run for the presidency that year. He cited the death of his son, Beau, of course, who died of brain cancer. But then, after a lot more speculation, Biden jumped in in 2020, and, of course, despite not being a front-runner, he won that race. Talk to us about the 2020 presidential race and how important that was, not just for Biden, but for Democrats as a party.
LIASSON: Well, Donald Trump was in office, and Democrats were absolutely determined to get him out. And don't forget, in 2016, instead of anointing Joe Biden, who was the obvious heir apparent - he was the vice president - Obama gave the nod and threw his support to Hillary Clinton. So there was a little bit of disappointment on Biden's part there. But in terms of 2020, we were in the midst of a pandemic. That really helped Biden, because he didn't have to keep a grueling, in-person kind of rally-a-day schedule. And he defeated Donald Trump, and that was a huge, huge thing for Democrats. And all of a sudden, they had a president whose concept of the presidency was as the legislator in chief. And he said about passing a lot of stuff, and he did pass a lot of stuff.
MONTANARO: Yeah, and I think Beau Biden's death was a real turning point in the Joe Biden story, because it both made him more determined. I mean, he talks about, in the book that he wrote following his son's death, how, after dealing with death, that you need purpose. And I think that running for president gave him a purpose, because he said that Beau, on his deathbed, told him that he has to run. I also think that it embittered Joe Biden a little bit, because, you know, he was essentially waved off from running in 2016 by the Obama team, you know, really kind of wanting to, as Mara noted, lay the sort of foundation for Hillary Clinton to run. And Biden wasn't convinced that she was going to win. And then, when she lost, it sort made him feel like he should double down and stick to his guns and stick to his gut, when, just because your gut's right once, doesn't mean it's always right. And I think it shows you also just how dedicated to family he is. And you can judge him through the lens also of a small state like Delaware, where he came from as a senator, a longest-serving senator from the state, which really has an inferiority complex. I can tell you as somebody who went to the University of Delaware...
LIASSON: (Laughter).
MONTANARO: ...That it's a state that, like, you know, it's seen as the small state, and, you know, they have to puff their chest out and say, well, we were the first - you know. And Joe Biden really sort of embodies that sort of chip-on-your-shoulder attitude that the state has overall.
LIASSON: You know, this is a really, really important point. Joe Biden's kind of origin story is, I'm the guy who's always counted out and they're always wrong, and I come back and I win. And he was so invested in that. I think that was part of the reason that he hung on for weeks and weeks after that disastrous debate performance. He just believed in his own origin story. And, as Domenico said, that works until it stops working.
MCCAMMON: Yeah. I mean, that disastrous debate performance against former President Trump this summer has to be the - one of the worst, if not the worst, moment of Biden's political life. It, of course, was sort of the last straw, after he'd faced a lot of pressure to drop out from Democrats who didn't think he was best for the party this year. He drops out. Vice President Kamala Harris, of course, becomes the nominee, but loses anyway. What does all of this mean for Biden's legacy?
LIASSON: Nothing good. Look - he said he was a bridge to the next generation. a transitional figure. That led a lot of people to think he was only going to serve one term and then step aside. There are a lot of Democrats who think that his aides covered up his decline and that if he had dropped out in a timely manner to allow a proper primary - primaries produce strong candidates. Might have been Kamala Harris, might have been somebody else, but whoever they were, they would have had the time to introduce themselves to voters, fix past positions that might have been too liberal or too left for today's voters, as you saw Kamala Harris struggle with. And a lot of Democrats feel that he really hurt the party. He didn't give them the fighting chance that they deserved, because he hung on too long.
MONTANARO: Yeah. You know, and I think it's a really tragic end to a political career, frankly, because Joe Biden is somebody who always valued and believed in himself as a good debater. This is somebody if you look back at old tape, even just the 2012 campaign, the 2008 campaign, those vice presidential debates, he had a great time with it. And you can see a huge decline from the 2020 debates to what we saw during the 2024 campaign and that debate performance.
And, you know, there's a lot that Joe Biden got done as president that's going to be overshadowed by how it ended. I mean, you have to think about the fact that a million people died from COVID in this country, and, you know, President Trump at the time was viewed as really mishandling that crisis. And Joe Biden came in, and, you know, I mean, it's hard to say that the country hasn't recovered fairly well from that overall, despite the fact that there was high inflation and people were upset about it.
When you compare it in a macro sense, when you zoom out historically, the United States recovered better economically than other countries. Certainly got - was a leader in distributing vaccines. That did start under former President Trump but was super-charged under Biden, as well as getting tests out to people and all of that. He really had his - the seat sort of taken out from under him with the sort of chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, where we really saw his approval ratings take a nosedive.
MCCAMMON: You know, that brings me to a, I think, final and related but slightly different question, which is, in this moment, Domenico, it feels very much, like you say, like a tragic end to a very long political career. At the same time, thinking back over that long career, this is a man who started out his Senate career having just - we didn't even talk about this - but just lost his first wife and daughter in a car accident, which really kind of, you know, shaped a big part of his story for his political career - a man who navigated grief again and again and had overcome a lot, but had gone through so many ups and downs, like we just talked about. Is history going to look at him any differently than maybe we're looking at him right in this moment?
MONTANARO: Yeah. I don't think that Joe Biden is going to be down there with James Buchanan as, like, you know, among the worst presidents in history, and I don't think he's probably going to be up there with Abraham Lincoln or FDR. But he's not going to be in a bad place either, because of the fact that what historians will look at is what did he do in handling the biggest problem within what his, you know, administration was handed? And clearly, COVID was the big thing and, for the most part, handled pretty well. You know, and I think that there's a lot in his career that people look back on and, you know, have some praise for - I mean, his writing of the Violence Against Women Act, being chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee and known for his empathy, as you said. You know, I mean, there are a lot of people who leaned on Joe Biden after tragic deaths in their families. I mean, Meghan McCain, daughter of John McCain, talks about how Joe Biden was really one of the principal people who really kind of was a shoulder to lean on. And Joe Biden likes to say there will come a time when that person brings a smile to your face rather than a tear to your eye. But I think for a lot of people, he was somebody who was a key figure in the story of the American presidency and in American history. Unfortunately for him, he was just too old at the time that he was up for reelection.
LIASSON: You know, history's written in hindsight. It's not a daily news story. And how he's going to be remembered, whether fondly or angrily by the Democratic Party, will really depend a lot on what happens. He passed a lot of things, a lot of very consequential legislation. As I said, his concept of the presidency was legislator in chief - that's what he'd been his whole career. So the question is how much of his legislative legacy will be still standing? Donald Trump wants to undo a lot of it. But what we do know is I think Joe Biden will be remembered as the person who both defeated Donald Trump and paved the way for his return and who had, at least at the time, a very significant legislative record - we don't know how permanent it'll be. But he failed utterly at the performative aspects of the presidency, you know, selling and explaining what he was doing, why it mattered to people's daily lives. That wasn't something that he even prioritized, because he was so involved in getting legislation passed.
MCCAMMON: OK, we're going to leave it there. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics.
MONTANARO: I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
LIASSON: And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
MCCAMMON: And thank you for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA'S "TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)")
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