There was a time, not that long ago, when President Biden imagined he would etch his place in history as the leader who ended the chaotic reign of Donald J. Trump, passed a raft of “Build Back Better” laws to transform the country and reestablished America’s place in the world.
Now, in the desultory final days of his administration, Mr. Biden finds himself repudiated, even by some of his fellow Democrats, as the president who refused to step aside until it was too late, paved the way for Mr. Trump’s return to power and, in a final gesture of personal grievance over stated principle, pardoned his own son for multiple felony convictions.
The disappointment and frustration expressed by his own supporters since Mr. Biden intervened to spare his son Hunter from prison and any future investigations captured the disenchantment of many Democrats with the outgoing president as the end draws near. How he will be remembered by posterity may be hard to predict at this point, but the past few weeks have not helped write the legacy he had once envisioned.
The pardon came as Mr. Biden’s political stock was already at a low ebb after a stinging election defeat for his party that many allies blamed more on him than on the candidate who stepped up after he belatedly dropped out, Vice President Kamala Harris. The decision to attack the credibility of the justice system to safeguard a relative aggravated admirers who sympathized with his plight as a father yet were shocked that he would break his own promise to respect the courts’ decision.
Mr. Biden is sliding toward the end of his presidency in lackluster fashion. He has largely ceded the stage to Mr. Trump, who is already conducting his own foreign policy without waiting to take office and building a wish list for his administration stocked with once-fringe figures intent on dismantling the very departments they are being assigned to run. Withdrawing from the fray, Mr. Biden maintains a light public schedule and has not held a news conference or given an interview since the election.
His trip to Angola this week allows him to say he fulfilled his promise to visit sub-Saharan Africa while president, but just barely, with two full days on the continent weeks before leaving office. He was such a marginalized figure during a recent international summit in Brazil that when he was late for a group photograph, other world leaders did not bother to wait and went ahead without him.
At home, his approval rating has dwindled to 37.7 percent in an aggregation of polls by the website FiveThirtyEight, near the low point of his tenure. His best political moment recently was brokering a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, but his hopes of finally ending the war in Gaza and securing the release of hostages held by Hamas remain unrealized.
The consternation with Mr. Biden among Democrats in Washington has been palpable since the election and has only been exacerbated by the pardon.
