I was angry about Biden in 2020, but between the infrastructure act, the chips act, and the soft landing, while I’ve had a difficult few years I actually liked his leadership (for what it was). I saw him as an old centrist who did a lot of bad things in the senate, and yeah that’s probably what’s in his heart of hearts. And while his pushes towards American sustainability were not as good as I wanted but better than we’ve had in a long time. He focused on long term and stabilizing policies to prevent recession, something we all expected that never came. He also put a lot of emphasis on not ignoring the things that needed done but had been put on the back burner for years like the bridges that former DOT officials refused to use. There’s also his FTC, with Lena Kahn being an aggressive advocate for the American people and being the only person in his administration that brought the energy that we needed.

I don’t think Biden will be remembered highly. His economic strategies were of the “build long term stability through slow and methodical action” variety in a country devastated by decades of short term economic thinking. But more than that, he repeatedly insisted on an outdated style of governance, one based on the assumption that bipartisan cooperation was possible. He didn’t commit Ford’s sin, but he was too soft handed with the J6ers. More than anything, as the nation crumbled he acted as though sound economic policy and diligent justice that prioritized appearing nonpartisan would save us. Also his waiting to step down and placing his VP who did just terribly in the primaries he only won by mass dropout as his replacement was not good.

I suspect he will be remembered alongside the likes of Calvin Coolidge and Andrew Johnson. But yeah, I was surprisingly impressed by his economic and infrastructure policies, even though they were more slow than ideal.