Press: Finally — a hard, honest look at Joe Biden 

After all of Donald Trump’s lies, you almost yearn for the good old days of George W. Bush. He didn’t lie (except for “weapons of mass destruction”), he just mangled his words. My favorite “Bushism” came on Nov. 6, 2000, when he complained to a rally in Bentonville, Ark.: “They misunderestimated me!”  

Hah! Bush should complain! He was hardly misunderestimated at all, compared to the way people misunderestimate Joe Biden every day. He has accomplished more, and gotten less credit for it, than any president in history.   

All the media write about is Biden’s poll numbers. Few are telling the whole story of the Biden administration, its high points and low. Until now. It’s all there in a new book by the Atlantic’s Franklin Foer about Biden and his first two years as president: “The Last Politician.”  

Foer’s book is not hagiography, but it’s not hate-mongering, either. It’s an honest assessment of Biden as politician and president, his strengths and weaknesses, where he has delivered and where he has not.  

In a sense, the title says it all. Joe Biden may, in fact, be the last in the line of politicians we once knew, both Democrat and Republican, who believed in government, who believed in democracy, who came to Washington to get things done, not to tear things down — and whose success was based on what legislation they helped pass, not on how many clicks they got after throwing Molotov cocktails on social media and cable news.  

After four years of Donald Trump, and especially after Jan. 6, Americans had lost faith in politics and politicians. When Biden took the oath of office, he knew expectations for his presidency were low. But he still believed in the power of politics, and was determined to prove the skeptics wrong.  

As Foer writes, he set out to “prove that democracy could still deliver for its citizens, that it hadn’t lost its capacity to accomplish big things.”  

On my podcast, the Bill Press Pod, Foer told me he started out skeptical of Biden’s ability to get anything done, but ended up impressed by how much he has accomplished. It started in March 2021 with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, helping Americans recover from the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and getting 100 million Americans vaccinated in the administration’s first 100 days.  

In November 2021, Biden accomplished what the last few presidents only talked about, signing the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. He followed up in June 2022 by signing the first gun safety legislation in more than 30 years, again with bipartisan support. On Aug. 9, Biden signed the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, providing $280 billion for domestic manufacturing of semiconductor computer chips. A week later, he signed the $891 billion Inflation Reduction Act, which includes the largest investment for climate change in history: a transformational bill, Foer argues, that “will change American life.”   

As portrayed by Foer, the dominant force of the Biden administration is his own stubborn persistence: putting his head down, ignoring the critics and plowing ahead while delivering historic bipartisan legislation, ending the war in Afghanistan and leading support for Ukraine. Foer argues on Ukraine, “the advantages of having an older president were on display. He wasn’t just a leader of the coalition, he was the West’s father figure.”  

In the end, Foer grudgingly admits, Biden will be remembered as “the old hack who could.” Maybe not the best title, but a far better option than “that other old hack who couldn’t.”  

Press hosts “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”