January 9, 2025
As Biden exits, he grapples with his foreign policy legacy

Joe Biden is two weeks away from riding into the sunset and enjoying the rest of his life in retirement.
With the calendar approaching Inauguration Day, Biden administration officials are doing what other administration officials have done countless times throughout history—bragging about their accomplishments. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has sat down with journalists from the Financial Times and The New York Times to make the case. Biden, like all of his predecessors, cares a great deal about his legacy and wants to be remembered as a man of action during an extraordinary time in world history. As he told USA Today this week, “I hope that history says that I came in and I had a plan how to restore the economy and reestablish America’s leadership in the world. That was my hope.”
So how did he do?
No president gets everything right. Perfect records are hard to come by. Biden’s is one of muddling through crises, reacting to unforeseen events, and being trapped by its own biases and assumptions.
Author

Daniel
DePetris
Fellow
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