Was he the aberration, Trump the new norm?

On January 16, 2025By Littum

In his inaugural address four years ago, President Joe Biden portrayed former President Donald Trump’s tumultuous tenure as an aberration and his own election as a return to political norms.

“A lot to fix. A lot to restore. A lot to heal,” Biden had declared in 2021, the sun splashing on his face as he stood on the west front of the Capitol. He called for “Unity! Unity!”

But in Biden’s farewell speech Wednesday night, it seemed more likely that his four years were the aberration, while Trump has become the driving norm.

Biden appeared to acknowledge that, delivering a stark warning about what he called the “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people.” His words were clearly aimed at Trump and his inner circle, including Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, although he did not cite anyone by name.

“An oligarchy is taking shape in America,” the president said, “devoted not to protecting democracy or securing opportunities for average people, but to amassing money and power for themselves.”

He called for sweeping reforms, including 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices, a ban on members of Congress from trading stocks, an end to undisclosed “dark money” in politics, and a constitutional amendment making clear that a president is not immune from prosecution for crimes they commit while in office.

His message about a “tech-industrial complex” deliberately echoed a warning issued by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his historic farewell address in 1961, when the former five-star general had warned of the emerging power of a “military-industrial complex.” .”

Biden spoke from the Oval Office, the most intimate setting a president can use to address the nation. Sitting at the resolute desk, he was serious and subdued and serious, stumbling over a few words. He spoke directly to the camera except at the end, when he acknowledged First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and a few others gathered at the side of the room, out of camera range.

His tenure will forever end with Trump’s two terms, only the second time in American history that a president’s terms are non-consecutive. Trump has already declared his intention to reverse many of his predecessor’s signature initiatives, from climate programs to support for Ukraine against Russia, at the cost of the legacy Biden hopes to leave.

Even Biden’s last major achievement, the Israel-Hamas ceasefire reached Wednesday that his administration had pursued for more than a year, came with a Trump stamp. The president-elect’s demand for a deal before his inauguration on Monday provided a final push that may have helped get it over the finish line.

“This EPIC cease-fire agreement could only have happened as a result of our historic victory in November,” Trump boasted in a post on Truth Social that did not mention Biden by name and was published before the president announced it.

Speaking in the afternoon, Biden acknowledged “coordinating” with “the incoming team,” but when a reporter asked whether he or Trump deserved the credit, he turned around and replied with an edge: “Is this a joke?”

A skeptical public

Biden faces an uphill task in convincing the public that he leaves a positive and consistent record, even a transformative one. In his evening speech, he said he had led “through one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history,” beginning with a “once-in-a-century pandemic.”

But as he retires after half a century in public office, only 44% of Americans approve of the job he’s doing, according to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll taken last week, while 55% rejected. Five percent said he would be remembered as a “great” president, the survey found; 44% said he would be seen as a “failed” president.

The judgment of history may be kinder, Biden hopes.

“You know it will take time to feel the full effect of everything we’ve done together,” he said in his speech. “But the seeds are planted and they will grow and they will flourish for decades to come.”

He didn’t offer a laundry list of his accomplishments in office, as some thought he would, and he didn’t signal what kind of role he might play in the national debate going forward.

“Now it’s your turn to stand guard,” he told those watching the televised address.