In her iconic song “Big Yellow Taxi,” an obvious lament about American presidents who have been underappreciated while in office only to finally be given their due with time’s passage, famed presidential historian Joni Mitchell wondered, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?” Professor Mitchell clearly foresaw C-SPAN’s Presidential Historians Survey, a periodic survey of historians on presidential leadership asked to rank past presidents on the basis of 10 criteria. The survey illustrates how presidents who leave office with their popularity in tatters are given high marks once the hurly-burly of political combat has receded and facts can be properly assessed.
For instance, Harry Truman, whose popularity by 1952 was so low that he opted not to run for reelection rather than be rejected at the polls, was ranked sixth highest among the presidents in the most recent survey. Lyndon Johnson, so unpopular in his own party in 1968 that he withdrew from the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after being humiliated in the New Hampshire primary, is ranked 11th based on his prodigious record of passing civil rights legislation.
In just four weeks, a bruised and depleted Joe Biden, aging before our eyes and a punching bag for pundits on both sides of the aisle, will go home to Delaware. Though he has remained president for constitutional purposes since Nov. 5, his presence, if you can call it that, has been largely unfelt for months. On a recent presidential trip to Africa, he said virtually nothing to the press, looking and sounding more like Calvin Coolidge than the voluble Biden of old. What media coverage he has received since President-elect Trump began naming a parade of embarrassments to Cabinet positions has been generally confined to the widespread panning of the pardon he issued to his son.
Biden’s notorious inability to effectively toot his own horn has been ironic given all that his administration has achieved. He has pulled the country back from the economic brink caused by the pandemic so badly mismanaged by his predecessor. He has put up economic numbers that will impress historians. And he has navigated into law investments in America’s future that will pay off for generations to come.
But over the last several weeks in particular, events have served to toot Biden’s horn for him, and loudly.
It was Biden who, drawing upon his keen understanding of the stakes at play in keeping Vladimir Putin from overrunning Ukraine, fashioned the international resistance to Russia that has kept it at bay, and left it badly weakened in the nearly three years since Russia’s 2022 invasion. The United Kingdom’s under-secretary of defense, Luke Pollard, recently estimated that over 750,000 Russian soldiers have already been killed, wounded or captured, and that that figure is likely to exceed 1 million by next spring. Russia’s losses have come, Pollard told Parliament “whilst only achieving limited tactical gains.”
Had Russia succeeded in subjugating Ukraine, as it surely would have but for Biden’s skilled, determined response to the invasion, the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe would be under threat of being next on Putin’s menu. Biden likely will be remembered as a hero in Europe for what he has done to protect future generations of Europeans.
Pinning Russia down has had an “8 ball in the side pocket” effect on the Middle East, where Biden’s refusal to placate his critics on the left by abandoning Israel has paid massive dividends and created new hopes. Israel has destroyed Hamas, decimated Hezbollah and exposed Iran as a paper tiger. This means new possibilities for Gazans, the Lebanese, the Iranians and now, with the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s savage and tyrannical regime, Syrians. Had Biden not understood the importance of ensuring that Israel had the means and the room with which to defend itself against the Mideast’s barbarians and had he caved to the protesters shouting “Genocide Joe,” the present — and the future — would look a lot different.
He’s derided by MAGA World. Democrats roll their eyes at the mention of his name. But Joe Biden’s been one consequential president. And that’s the way history is likely to judge him.
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