Analysis: With Joe Biden about to leave the White House, his approval rating among voters is unusually dire.
For a man who aspired to be president of the United States ever since he was a teenager, he can’t be especially pleased with his four years in office.
But he will also retire with some bitterness, because his legacy may well be defined not by what he did, but by what he was unable to stop happening.
So how will Joe Biden’s term in office be remembered?
When the world remembers Biden, the prevailing memory won’t have anything to do with his policies.
Instead he’ll be remembered as an old man, one that often appeared without the vitality and energy to be president.
For a politician who was defined early in his career for his vigour and capacity to talk, by the time he became president those gifts had faded.
Instead the world saw a man in his 80s who repeatedly tripped running up a flight of stairs, or on stage.
As his presidency went on, his answers to questions became shorter and less coherent, his movements slower.
This all became painfully clear during last year’s presidential debate.
Biden was incoherent, trailing off and forgetting his talking points. When he wasn’t speaking, he was staring blankly into space, his mouth agape.
Donald Trump didn’t need to break into a jog to run circles around him.
Joe Biden was the first president in well more than a hundred years to not run for a second term.
But the reality is after his disastrous debate, he was pressured out of the race.
Had Kamala Harris won the election, this decision would be remembered as being an act of grace and humility.
But now Democrats grumble that he stayed in the race too long, denying Harris (or potentially a different nominee) a better chance of winning.
This is the most impactful achievement of Joe Biden’s presidency.
When he stepped into the White House, his predecessor had no pandemic plan in place, and the infection rate was close to its peak.
But within months, most Americans had been vaccinated and the nation had opened up again.
It’s no wonder that Biden invoked the COVID-19 response so many times in last year’s presidential debate.
But the pandemic now feels like a distant memory. But when the history books are written, it’s likely COVID-19 will feature larger in his biography than it might seem.
The Biden campaign was immensely frustrated with how the media depicted the economy in recent years.
But job growth has been remarkable in Biden’s term in office, far outstripping recent history.
As many jobs were created in Biden’s worst year than in Trump’s best year.
But despite the low unemployment rate and boom on Wall Street, Americans were convinced the economy was dire, for one simple reason.
Low unemployment and inflation go hand-in-hand, and for most Americans, prices rose higher than their wages.
A contributing factor was Biden’s massive post-COVID stimulus spending, but most of the price rises were out of Biden’s hands.
Nevertheless, the voters blamed the party in power for high prices, as they have done in elections elsewhere around the world.
For the first few months of Joe Biden’s presidency, his approval rating was well above water.
But they plummeted after the fall of Afghanistan, and never recovered.
It was with extraordinary bitterness that the US (and Australia) watched the Afghan government capitulate to the Taliban in a matter of days.
Biden had cause to be irritated with how he was treated in the aftermath. The withdrawal of US troops had been negotiated between Donald Trump and the Taliban, and Biden had to honour the agreement.
But like with Vietnam in 1975, the anger Americans felt at the messy evacuation of the capital will soon enough be replaced with relief that they were finally out of a war.
In the long term, Biden may be remembered favourably as the president willing to endure the unpleasant ending to a 20-year war, which is something three of his predecessors were unwilling to do.
The president has long prided himself as a foreign affairs heavyweight, which was the main reason he was chosen as Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008.
After years of profound instability in the Middle East, Hamas began a war that Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu was more than willing to fight.
And Biden found himself in the middle between a majority of Americans backing Israel, and a very vocal minority opposing them.
It may well be that Biden won’t be credited with negotiating the ceasefire, but blamed for not doing it sooner.
It will be with immense frustration that Biden will look at his term as the moment abortion ceased to be a guaranteed right in America.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, there was nothing he could do to stop it.
In the next four years, it’s likely that an outright majority of the Supreme Court will be composed of Trump appointees.
Which could mean abortion won’t be reinstated as a right for a generation.
Biden was only able to appoint one Supreme Court judge, not even to make a meaningful impact.
When the dust settles, it’s unlikely Joe Biden will be remembered as one of the greatest presidents ever.
But it’s also unlikely he’ll be remembered as one of the worst.
Biden will probably end up in the middle of the pack, along with some faces most Americans wouldn’t be able to recognise.
Most people aren’t worse off as a result of Biden being president, but they won’t feel better off either.
Biden may have to be satisfied that his teenage ambitions came true, even if it wasn’t what he hoped it to be.
