Biden to Tout Job Growth, Legacy in Farewell Address Before Trump Return

(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden will cast his presidency as an economic turnaround in his farewell address to the nation, looking to define his legacy after his party’s election defeat and as polls show his popularity at fresh lows.

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Biden’s Wednesday evening speech from the Oval Office caps a half century in public life and a tumultuous presidency in which early legislative victories soon grew overshadowed by inflation and concerns about his age, ultimately forcing him from the 2024 race and opening the door for Donald Trump’s defiant return.

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Biden has spent these last weeks trying to codify key files and attempting to refocus attention on achievements of his term that have been at least somewhat overshadowed: highlighting robust job growth, moderating but persistent inflation, health care measures and flagship investments in manufacturing.

Biden’s approval rating has fallen to 36.1%, lower at this stage of his presidency than every one of his predecessors since Jimmy Carter, according to polling data aggregated by FiveThirtyEight.

Biden is also grappling with a cold reality: While he has long cast Trump as an existential threat, he’s now days away from attending Trump’s inauguration.

“I ran for president because I believed that the soul of America was at stake. The very nature of who we are was at stake. And that’s still the case,” Biden said in a public letter released Wednesday before his speech. “History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands.”

His remarks are the latest in a goodbye tour. He’s maintained a subdued public profile since Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election. Biden has given just a handful of interviews and sparingly fielded questions from the press.

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Harris’ truncated campaign came only after Biden bowed out under mounting pressure from fellow Democrats. His disastrous debate performance against Trump last June escalated questions about his age and increasingly evident decline.

Biden still harbors regrets about his departure from the race, saying publicly he thought he might have won — “I think I would have beaten Trump, could have beaten Trump,” he said Friday — though no other prominent figure in his party has shared that position. He also demurred on whether Harris should run again in four years, a prospect that’s drawn little public party support so far.

“I think there should be a competitive primary, is my answer,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat and potential candidate himself, said in an interview Tuesday. “I think primaries really do matter.”

All that threatens to cast Biden’s legacy to something of an aside — an interlude between Trump presidencies that altogether led to nearly unfettered Republican control of Washington. It has also left Democrats grappling with how to rebuild their party and message.

Harris will join Biden in the Oval Office for his address. Devastating fires in Los Angeles last week forced them to scrap capstone trips abroad — Biden’s to Rome and the Vatican, and Harris’s to Singapore, Bahrain and Germany.

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Biden’s letter, which the White House published to preview the speech, said he took office in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic legacy, and in the shadow of the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” a reference to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters.

The president touted job growth, manufacturing growth and subsidies and measures to cap drug costs for older people and expand access to health insurance.

“We came together as Americans, and we braved through it. We emerged stronger, more prosperous, and more secure.” The letter also made a point of mentioning the passage of a bill offering support to soldiers suffering from the military’s use of burn pits, which Biden believes was the source of the cancer that killed his son Beau Biden.

Earlier: Biden Says US Is Stronger Now in His Foreign Policy Farewell

In one fire briefing last week, Biden sat behind the Resolute desk, a table behind him peppered with more than a dozen framed family photos, and a favorite cartoon, where a man in a raging storm shouts “Why me?!” to the heavens. A reply is shouted back: “Why not?” Biden’s letter Wednesday nodded to the office, and the desk.

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“Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as president of the United States,” he wrote.

Biden will attend Monday’s inauguration, though Trump skipped Biden’s in 2021. He’s not specified his post-presidency plans but said earlier this month he would seek to maintain some profile. “I’m not going to be out of sight or out of mind,” he said.

--With assistance from Isis Almeida.

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