Joe Biden Launches a Comeback No One Is Asking For | | | BY PHILIP ELLIOTT
Senior Correspondent, TIME | The speaker had an alarming warning for his audience: for the first time ever, Social Security benefits may not reach beneficiaries this month thanks to cuts to the government office that handles them. But if the message to the gathering of advocates for disabled persons on Tuesday night was urgent, the delivery was all-too-familiar. | "Folks, let's put this in perspective," former President Joe Biden intoned. "In the 90 years since Franklin Roosevelt created the Social Security system, people have always gotten their Social Security checks. They've gotten them during wartime. During recessions. During a pandemic. No matter what, they got them. Now, for the first time ever, that might change. It would be calamity for millions of families." | It was Biden's first public speech since leaving the White House, and it brought it all back. There was the former President's favorite feigned indifference to his 2020 rival, referring to "This Guy" as a stand-in for Trump. There were the cliches: "They're shooting first and aiming later," Biden said. And there were the awkward sentence constructions. "In fewer than 100 days, this new Administration has done so much damage and so much destruction. It's kind of breathtaking it happened that soon." | It's the comeback no one is asking for, starting just 85 days after Biden left the White House. | | | There is a rhythm to most post-presidencies, with most Commanders-in-Chief stepping back for a period out of the spotlight. Trump, of course, defied trends, but Obama traveled the globe and palled around with his celebrity friends. George W. Bush retreated to Texas to take up oil painting and largely swore off politics. Bill Clinton took a (brief) minute to cede the spotlight to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who assumed office as New York's junior Senator with 17 days left on her time as First Lady. All began work on their Presidential libraries, quietly raising money behind the scenes. | Biden has taken a different path since stepping down. He has been back in Washington every couple of weeks for meetings about his post-presidential life. Last month he came to pick up a lifetime achievement award from one of his most loyal unions, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He popped up at a Model UN event in New York and this weekend for a Passover seder with Delaware's Governor. He appeared in black tie for opening night of Othello on Broadway, snubbing another star-studded play, Good Night and Good Luck led by George Clooney who penned a brutal op-ed urging Biden to leave the 2024 race, earning permanent exile from the Biden orbit. | | Closer to home, Biden has started on the outline for his memoirs. He has scaled-back his calls to pals on Capitol Hill, taking a breather from the day-to-day political brawl. To the bewilderment of even his best allies in the Senate, there has been no hard movement on a presidential library. And he has done zero fundraising in an environment where dollars get harder to raise the further the asking party is from the action. Some of Biden's most excuse-prone donors say they are not even sure where Biden plans to build his library, whenever he does get around to it. | If he's less interested in fundraising than in getting back in the public eye, it may be because he wants to draw the contrast with Trump's tumultuous start to his second term. Democratic faithful readily point to what they insist is Biden's record of accomplishment: a tax credit that led to the lowest rate of childhood poverty in U.S. history; millions in spending to ease the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic; huge subsidies for U.S. businesses through investments in the clean-energy sector; and an economy that added more than 16 million jobs. And Biden clearly relished the opportunity to step back on stage, joining the Advocates, Counselors, and Representatives for the Disabled conference in Chicago Tuesday. | | READ THE STORY » | | | | |
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