Biden Had the World’s Most Powerful Perch—and Rarely Used It

It wasn’t just his age and infirmities. The president was non-confrontational, both at home and abroad.

(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

THE DEBATE OVER JOE BIDEN’S legacy will continue well beyond the official end of his presidency at noon tomorrow. But one view is gaining consensus among pundits and commentators: Few presidents have utilized the bully pulpit to less effect.

Once known for his comfort under the spotlight during his long pursuit of the White House, Biden seemed almost allergic to wielding the social-atmospheric powers of that office after he finally got there.

Some of that was out of his control. He took over during a pandemic, which kept him largely bound to the White House during his first year. But much of his public reticence was dictated by both him and his aides. It wasn’t just that his growing infirmities compelled him to do fewer interviews or primetime speeches, conduct less travel, and take fewer political risks—it was that he preferred a carrot-heavy, stick-light, and confrontation-averse approach, as a matter of governance and personality.

Biden liked wooing lawmakers domestically and bolstering allies internationally more than browbeating opponents or outwardly confronting antagonists. The approach had its successes, both home and abroad. But as Democrats brace for the coming Donald Trump era, many look back with frustration at the opportunities lost—the wasted carrots and the sticks left unused.

“I was part of a small group trying to convince the powers that be it wasn’t going to work, that he shouldn’t run again and that there needed to be a primary,” said one top Democrat, reflecting on conversations he had with party leaders and top donors following the 2022 midterms. “Forget the political arguments. One of the most important things is the ability to get him out there to talk. His strength was he could go out there and do that empathetic thing. And then he couldn’t.”

There is perhaps no better illustration of how Biden’s approach frustrated Democrats than his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. The ceasefire deal announced this week was first outlined by Biden back in the spring. And in the intervening months, the president’s foreign policy team doggedly worked to get both the Netanyahu government and Hamas leadership to embrace it. But it was reportedly Trump’s November victory, and Trump’s demands of both Israel and neighboring Arab nations that a hostage deal be completed expeditiously, that forced both parties to sign the pact.

The Washington Post quoted a diplomat as saying that it was “the first time there has been real pressure on the Israeli side to accept a deal.”

Why Biden felt he couldn’t apply that same pressure is a question that will hang over both his presidency and the Middle East itself. But part of the explanation may simply be that it wasn’t in his character to put the screws on.

As Tom Malinowski, the former congressman from New Jersey, put it: Biden “believed in our values but not our power. Whereas Trump believes in our power, but not our values.”

Malinowski, in an interview with The Bulwark, recalled a similar type of complaisance from Biden on the domestic front. In the fall of 2021, House Democrats were stuck in an internal caucus debate over whether to move forward on an infrastructure bill or fast track their Build Back Better initiative first. Biden went up to Capitol Hill to meet with members to help break the impasse.

The plan from House leadership, according to Malinowski and confirmed by a Democratic aide, was for Biden to deliver a pep talk and then to call on the members to follow him to the House floor to pass the infrastructure bill with an express promise to tackle the BBB agenda next. It would have been an Aaron Sorkin–esque gesture—a dramatic use of the presidential stage to manifest a result into existence. Party leadership seemed convinced that few, if any, lawmakers would cross Biden at such a spectacular moment.

“And then, he didn’t do it. He didn’t make the ask. He just couldn’t bring himself to put us on the spot,” recalled Malinowski. “I remember going up to some of his aides after and asking, ‘What was that?’ And they were like, ‘I don’t know.’ He was just super nice. He gave a really nice talk. It was Biden at his homespun best.

“There was just no demand at the end.”

---

ANDREW BATES, A WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN who was in the room, disputed that Biden had ever agreed to “endorse an infrastructure vote that day.” Rather, the president was there to make “the case that we needed to stick with what would become the [Inflation Reduction Act] despite the fact that it would not include everything he wanted.”

In the end, as another administration official noted, the soft touch worked. The infrastructure bill passed. So did the IRA.

And yet, Biden was not rewarded politically for those bills, or for the others he got done. The Teamsters union, whose pension he saved, declined to endorse him. His pursuit of student debt relief didn’t win him the backing of younger voters. The manufacturing jobs he brought to red states did little to help him make political inroads there. For those reasons, Malinowski said, one can’t help but wonder what a more forceful use of the bully pulpit might have achieved.

“He did get the deals he needed on most things—sometimes with the help of his moderate Republicans in the Senate. But having a ‘fuck you’ mentality also projects strength to the public. It helps you take credit for what you’re doing because people will have seen you use strength to make that thing happen.

“We should have spent a lot of money running against Republicans who voted against the infrastructure bill,” Malinowski added. “We should have put up billboards that said: ‘Stuck in traffic? Call Congresswoman Smith, who voted against the infrastructure bill.’”

In an emailed statement, Bates defended the president’s record, noting that he gave “high-profile speeches, five Oval Office addresses, direct appeals to lawmakers, and more than 60 interviews over the past year, and nearly 700 gaggles with the White House press corps in office.”

But those numbers mask how limited—and, often, curated—Biden’s public appearances were. And they don’t address the more philosophical critique that even his fellow Democrats have offered in recent days and months: that Biden had lost the ability to be convincing and lacked the appetite to be forceful.

Following Biden’s farewell address from the Oval Office on Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) grumbled on X that the president had waited too long to speak out against the Supreme Court and warn about oligarchy. (Whitehouse did not return a request for comment.) Other Democrats on Friday found it odd, though almost fitting, that Biden’s final political acts were to refrain from enforcing a TikTok ban he had signed into law and to declare the Equal Rights Amendment ratified without instructing the nation’s archivist to certify the amendment. It was, once more, a message without a purpose.

Even Biden himself seems to have recognized that his time in office was characterized by a lack of execution. In an interview with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Thursday, he said of his work in the White House: “I almost spent too much time on the policy, not enough time on the politics.”

Those remarks gloss over the question of whether he would have been effective at “the politics” had he given that side of his role more attention. They also sidestep the hiccups and missed opportunities throughout his tenure not in his dealings with voters but with other world leaders. There too, Malinowski argues, Biden could have learned some things from Trump.

He recalled how during the depths of COVID-19, U.S. oil producers begged Saudi Arabia to cut production to keep prices from imploding. The situation was so dire that Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) organized legislation to withdraw U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia. And when Trump threatened Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, that he’d support the bill unless production was cut, the Saudis complied.

Two years later, as the pandemic receded and the price of oil skyrocketed, Biden tried a softer approach to get more oil flowing. In 2022, he met with and fistbumped the reviled Saudi leader, whom he had called a pariah while running for president. It was a shocking turnaround, one that harmed Biden politically and belied his pledge to put human rights at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy. But White House aides were hoping that the carrots could work. They came away empty-handed and embarrassed. The Saudis declined to pump more oil before the midterms.

“I look back on Biden as the most successful domestic president of my lifetime given the degree of difficulty he faced. . . . Even on foreign policy, he had great values and goals and management of our democratic allies,” said Malinkowski. “But he was lousy at dealing with thugs—including thugs who pretend to be our allies—and it tarnished his legacy and America’s global standing.”