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Former President Joe Biden is going nowhere. That’s not necessarily good for his fellow Democrats.
In a friendly interview Thursday on ABC’s “The View,” the 82-year-old fixture of Establishment Washington signaled he still sees himself as a player in politics. Breaking with the usual tradition in the same way Donald Trump did as an ex-President, Biden took aim at his successor in less-than-veiled terms while defending his one term in the White House. He also denied allegations in an upcoming book that his “cognitive capability,” in his phrasing, fell off over his four years in the White House. Yet he acknowledged that the end of his life as an elected official, owing to a catastrophic debate performance last June that shepherded him from the race, did not come about how he had anticipated.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“I had a bad, bad night,” Biden admitted.
But, looking to start a rehabilitation of his image as an elder statesman of a party out of power, Biden urged his fellow Democrats to keep the faith and stay vigilant.
“We’re still the greatest country in the world. Not a joke,” Biden said.
Since leaving office in January, Biden has largely eschewed the spotlight. The View appearance was his first U.S. interview and was a largely rose-tinted look back at his career at the center of politics dating back to the 1970s. He at times seemed defensive and at others somewhat clinical, trying to cast his decision to step aside last summer as a selfless act meant to unify Democrats. But he also struck a defiant tone against Trump, who has fixated on Biden since taking office, according to a TIME analysis of White House transcripts.
“I beat him,” Biden said, referring to his 2020 election win during an hour-long conversation that largely kept the former President on safe footing. The senior statesman did his best to defend his time in office while owning mistakes made on his watch.
“I was in charge. He won. So I take responsibility,” Biden said.
Still, Biden didn’t mince words on his view of what Trump has shown the world on his return to power. “He’s had the worst 100 days any President has ever had,” Biden said.
Joined by former First Lady Jill Biden, the ex-President addressed reporting that he was a step off his game. Asked directly about those stories, which will dog the Biden universe when a new book from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson drops later this month, Biden did his level best to brush them off. But in trying to downplay the news, Biden made odd, passing references to the Jan. 6 insurrection and the Covid-19 pandemic—playing into the sense that maybe this show is nearing its sunset.
“The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us,” Dr. Biden said. “Joe worked really hard. He was a great President. If you look at things today, give me Joe Biden anytime.”
But, at another point, the former First Lady acknowledged things went off the rails at the June 27 debate in Atlanta.
“We all saw it. It was terrible,’ she said.
Introspection has always been Biden’s most vexing quality; he can look inward to the point of being paralyzed by his own insecurities. His quest for affirmation demands a constant nursing of fear, and his life out of the spotlight has not cured him of that. In fact, Biden denied reporting—based on named sources who have told the story many times—that he told Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced him on the ticket, to hold him at arm’s length.
Yet, in short order, he conceded in a way that his brand might have been a drag.
“She has to be her own person,” Biden said.
Biden, who knows a thing or two about being the loyal understudy after eight years in the role for Barack Obama, noted Harris was no rubber stamp.
“We argued like hell, by the way,” Biden said. “We worked it out. It was a mutual thing.”
Ex-Presidents have a tricky relationship with relevance after leaving the White House, and Biden’s re-entry into the mortal world is still a work in progress. His legacy is similarly in formation, with the Biden orbit recently tapping one of the best spin doctors in Democratic politics to help him polish it. But his return to center stage—or at least his self-invitation to it—is showing the fissures in a party that hasn’t fully decided if Biden is friend or foe, the party elder who stepped aside or the has-been who didn’t know when to exit.
Thursday’s chat with the ladies of “The View” will not resolve that question. Far from it. But it shows that Biden is not going to be a passive player in the debate. With some pretty halting answers and uneven messaging, Biden didn’t exactly help his cause. But agency is a big part of the narrative, and, with Dr. Biden at his side, it is telling that the 46th President is not going to cede ground to his successor, or a Democratic Party unsure how to deal with a five-decade pillar who thinks himself a tentpole.
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