President Joe Biden’s goal is to secure his legacy as he spends his last weeks in the White House.
While the people in his administration work to prioritize the agenda and emphasize the things that might secure that legacy, they are mindful that Biden’s successor (who was also his predecessor) is lurking in the wings and come Jan. 20 will likely tear it all down.
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There is little doubt that now that the election is over, the Biden administration doesn’t feel burdened by the constraints of a campaign, nor do they seem concerned by President-elect Donald Trump’s pending return to power.
They do, however, realize that everything they do may have little or no consequence after the inauguration.
They do understand that anything Mr. Biden does today can be undone in a few short weeks. But, still, for the current White House, the priority is Biden’s reputation, Biden’s legacy. It is Biden’s policy.
The priorities for the Biden White House include spending on infrastructure, pushing environmental goals, increasing support for Ukraine, and moving forward with additional judicial picks. When he sweeps into office, Trump will likely repeal many of those moves and do so quickly by Executive Order.
Biden already scored a victory having the Senate quickly fill judicial vacancies. Absences by Trump’s Senate pals helped Democrats confirm some of those Biden judges. Democrats are racing to fill more vacancies on the bench before January, but Trump is trying to slow that.
We’ve already seen the sitting president solidify support for Ukraine by allowing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to use long-range missiles to infiltrate Russia. He also approved the use of antipersonnel mines, undoing his own policy.
Also on the agenda is fast-tracking $6 billion in aid that remains to be allotted and further sanctions against Moscow. All of this, knowing full well that Trump has a much different ideology when it comes to how he wants to approach the situation with the now escalating tension between Russia and Ukraine.
While the president has been front and center on that foreign policy front, he recently exited the world stage with a less dramatic departure after his swing through South America. The man who enjoyed a lengthy foreign policy career was at the G20 summit and exited the world stage with a slow fade from view.
He and his team worked to polish his legacy and highlight his accomplishments with other world leaders, knowing full well that in the back halls of that same summit diplomats spoke of their fears about things that may be reversed or just neglected by the incoming administration.
Still, there was tangible evidence that those same foreign leaders were ready to move on. It came when Mr. Biden and a group of others missed a photo opportunity. In earlier times, the group would have waited. The moment was a fluke, but the inevitability of it all was hard to ignore, according to observers.
Those same world leaders are already working to curry Trump’s favor, issuing invitations to visit once he takes office.
That said, from reports at the G20, Biden seemed to take it all in stride.
For Biden, as he gets ready to fade into the background, there is one priority remaining: laying the groundwork for a “smooth transition of power.” He has stressed publicly that it is necessary to reinforce Americans' faith in the electoral process.
That’s why he met with Trump at the White House after Mr. Trump’s victory. Something that Mr. Trump denied him four years ago. As one political analyst put it, Biden won’t shrink from the chance to make his final case for his worldview.
That’s why the president has been more “public” at least for now, very mindful of the fact that when Trump sweeps into office it is with a mandate to change the status quo. And Biden is very aware that the president-elect is just waiting to abruptly shift U.S. priorities and undo many things he is working on during his waning days in the White House.
In the end, will any of this matter? How will history record it? How will what happens change the world? How will things in the U.S. change? Only time will tell!
Biden’s legacy, and Trump’s potential undoing of his policies, is the topic of discussion when political analyst Sean Freeder joins me on the latest edition of Path to the Polls.
Watch live at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday on News4JAX+, News4JAX.com and YouTube. You can also catch the encore presentation at 7 p.m. on News4JAX+ or watch on demand any time on all of our platforms.