Joe Biden leaves little behind at the White House except Donald Trump

What is it about high office that blinds political leaders to the fact that their time has come and gone?

Bob Hawke could not see the writing on the wall that night in December 1991 when Paul Keating did him in. Hawke tearfully told his post-defeat press conference that of all the people in the Labor Party, he knew the Australian electorate best.

Hawke is remembered for his achievements, not his departure.

Fate will not be so generous to Joe Biden. As he leaves office after four years as the 46th US president, Biden’s singular, most enduring achievement is to have made Donald Trump great again.

Biden suffered similar delusions as Hawke and stayed on too long in the mistaken belief that he knew and understood the American people better than anyone. Having saved the US from a second coming of Trump in 2020, he broke his word to be a one-term president and decided to stand a second term. And even when it became obvious to America and the world that his age had wearied him beyond serious contention, a fumbling Democratic Party hierarchy failed to organise a successor and dared not tell their octogenarian president that his time was over. They made Kamala Harris’ task a mission impossible.

Biden’s four years in office were hobbled by the previous Trump administration’s reprehensible failures during the pandemic. Biden was never able to counter anger about rising costs, inflation and paranoia about immigration, but when he came to office at 78 – the oldest man ever to be elected president – he scored some domestic policy achievements, notably in job creation, the on-shoring of the microchip industry and climate change and antitrust legislation.

Internationally, he strengthened relations with Asian allies and established multilateral co-operation frameworks with India and fostered stability in the Asia-Pacific, but faced double standards issues over US support for Israel’s military action in Gaza and US criticism of Russia’s military action in Ukraine.

In the same way the accomplishments of Democratic predecessor Lyndon Johnson, the 36th US president, on health and segregation were forever overshadowed by lies aimed at hoodwinking his nation and keeping America in the Vietnam War, history is likely to treat Biden with similar unkindness.

Biden’s presidency occurred as the US struggled with the growing losses of internal stability and international hegemony, and a rapidly changing world economy. He even belatedly and unconsciously acknowledged his own failure to halt the rot by warning in his farewell speech last week against the threat that extreme wealth and the rise of “tech industrial complex” presented to democracy, even as billionaires including Australians Gina Rinehart and Anthony Pratt came to pay court to Trump.