In his farewell address, President Joe Biden issued a dire warning. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” he said. An oligarchy is a nation where a small group of rich people pull the strings, generally for their own benefit.
Certainly, the news of tech moguls Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg attending Donald Trump’s inauguration reinforces that imagery. But Biden’s final speech as president was marked by the same muddled thinking that defined his administration. Looking back, these four years were a failure even on its own terms.
This Editorial Board has fierce disagreements about the next Trump presidency. Some of us fear his anti-market and authoritarian instincts. Others celebrate his promise to shake up the existing order. But we all agree the Biden presidency was a bust. The initial problem is in 2020 we expected him to govern as a moderate, but instead he gave in to progressive demands.
“President Biden, when he came into office, said that he would be the most progressive president since F.D.R., and I think on domestic issues – not on foreign policy – on domestic issues, he has kept his word,” said Bernie Sanders, the Democratic socialist who challenged Biden for the 2020 nomination. In terms of spending, Biden tried to give Franklin D. Roosevelt a run for the money.
Every administration, Democrat and Republican, goes wild on federal spending, but Biden opened the storehouse of stimulus spending, which drove up inflation and helped doom Kamala Harris’ candidacy. Unlike Trump, at least he could distinguish the good guys from the bad ones in foreign affairs. But domestically, Biden modeled his policies on failed big-government ideas from a different era.
That was obvious in labor policy, where Biden tried by administrative fiat to impose the disastrous union-backed restrictions on independent contracting similar to California’s Assembly Bill 5. We join those who criticize Trump 2.0’s least-qualified nominees, but Biden tapped some demonstrably incompetent officials including California’s Julie Su for Labor and Xavier Becerra for Health and Human Services. His Luddite approach to antitrust seems like something crafted in a union hall. Unfortunately, Trump’s views on that issue align closely with Biden’s.
We do credit Biden for helping pilot a relatively soft economic landing, but helping avoid economic disaster is not the same as charting a sustainable growth-oriented path forward. And we cannot forgive him – or at least his family, consultants, politicians and aides – for not revealing his declining mental condition. Biden’s debate with Trump shocked Americans for revealing his situation, but his inner circle should have convinced him not to pursue a second term.
By doggedly campaigning for one, Biden and his supporters in the Democratic leadership undermined their main claim against Trump: that he was a threat to democracy. Biden should have put his ego aside, stepped aside for 2024 and allowed a primary campaign, which is the best way for the party to select a leader with the best chance to stop Trump. If Biden truly feared the emergence of an oligarchy, he certainly didn’t take the right steps to stop it. History probably won’t treat him well.