The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved, history will be kind to Joe Biden

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

“Together, we shall write an American story of hope, not fear” Joe Biden proclaimed as he took his oath of office in January 2021. His supporters argue that what the President was able to accomplish in four years is nothing short of remarkable. They point to his success at passing the largest infrastructure program since the 1950's, expanding health care, enacting gun control legislation, and expanding NATO as incredible accomplishments that have cemented his legacy as a transformative president along the likes of FDR and Lyndon Johnson. To his detractors, Joe Biden will be remembered as an ineffective leader who presided over an era of hyperinflation, global instability, and mistrust in institutions. The effects of excessive federal spending, a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and an unprotected southern border will be felt for generations. And capping off his disastrous tenure with an unconditional pardon for his son severed the last threads of trust in government and added fuel to the growing fire of populist resentment. Arguing in favour of the resolution is Timothy Noah, staff writer at The New Republic Arguing against the resolution is Gil Troy, presidential historian and Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University   You can vote on who you think won this debate. Go to our website www.munkdebates.com to become a free member and cast your vote. The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths  To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 15+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran Lynch  Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We tried socialism all through the 20th century, and it failed every time. We should restore dignity to the working class and stop saying you need a credential in order to achieve the most basic, modest version of the American dream. Netanyahu is the worst leader the Jewish people ever had. He should be impeached. Genocide is the latest modern blood liable that anti-Semites use to justify their anti-Zionism. We should prioritize making sure that no more Ukrainians die that this war is brought to an end. All parents want to help children with their feelings, but I argue that not every feeling is worth paying attention to.

Why are these students covering their faces? I think it says something about their movement, about their ideology, and also simply the fact that they're also cowards. Welcome to the Monk Debates. Every episode we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day. Our goal with each and every program of the Monk Debates is to arm you with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved, history will be kind to Joe Biden.

With unity, we can do great things, important things. We can write wrongs. We can put people to work in good jobs. We can teach our children in safe schools. We can overcome the deadly virus. We can reward work and rebuild the middle class and make health care secure for all. We can deliver racial justice, and we can make America, again, the leading force for good in the world.

That was Joe Biden outlining a bold vision for America in January 2021 as he took the oath of office. To his supporters, he was a president able to accomplish many important things in his four years. They point to his success at passing the largest infrastructure program in the United States since the 1950s, expanding health care coverage and acting gun control legislation. and strengthening NATO. All lasting accomplishments that have, for some, cemented his legacy as a transformative president among the likes of FDR and Lyndon Johnson.

To his detractors, Joe Biden will be remembered as an ineffective, at times, feckless leader who presided over an era of inflation, global instability, and growing mistrust in public institutions. The effects of excessive federal spending, a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and an unprotected southern border will all be effects of the Biden administration reverberating for years to come. And to cap off what some saw as a disastrous tenure as president,

he has unconditionally pardoned his son, severing the last threads of legitimacy and trust in his government and adding fuel to the growing fire of the populist movement in America. On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the most, be resolved, history will be kind to Joe Biden. Arguing in favor of the resolution is Timothy Noah, staff writer at the New Republic.

Arguing against the resolution is Gil Troy, presidential historian and distinguished scholar of North American history at McGill University. Timothy, Gil, welcome to the Monk Debates. Thank you. Honored to be with you. Important debate today as we contemplate the last few weeks of the Biden presidency. Our motion before the proverbial house, be it resolved,

history will be kind to Joe Biden. Timothy, you're arguing in favor of the motion. So let's get this debate underway. We'll put two minutes on the show clock and turn the program over to you. My argument is a bit ironic because the voters rejected Kamala Harris largely on the basis of the state the economy. But in fact, Biden not only managed the economy well in the cyclical terms, which is that on his watch, inflation came down. It was mostly the work of the Fed. And we had a soft landing, which is to say no recession after the Fed brought up interest rates. But in a larger sense, we saw a shifting away from the kind of classical economic, sometimes we'll call it neoliberalism, that had dominated the Democratic Party for many decades. We saw a bolder use of government investment

in the industry. We saw the most direct embrace of labor unions from any president going back to Harry Truman. And in general, we saw a different kind of liberalism emanating from the White House and the greatest commitment we've seen to green energy from any president, for example. And this will all speak in Biden's favor, I think, when historians look back. Thank you, Timothy, for that succinct opening statement. Gil, your opportunity. now to open our debate. You're speaking against our motion. Be at Resolve History will be kind to Joe Biden. Let's hear your opening statement. First, two quick caveats. One is that history develops and the presidential stock market swings wildly. So we don't know how things will look at 10, 20, 30 years from now.

And in fact, Joe Biden still has about six weeks left. And who knows, maybe there could be another pardon coming down the pike or another country collapsing. So there's still more to be done. But I have no doubt that historians will want to be kind to Joe Biden, precisely because of the achievements that Timothy Noah just mentioned. But I don't think history will be kind to him because he failed a most fundamental moral position. He didn't unite the country. After two and a half weeks after the January 6th riots in the Capitol,

Joe Biden was inaugurated. And Americans were searching for leadership. Americans were searching for unity. And everybody, when he passed some of those big New Deal type legislations, compared him to Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt said the presidency is not merely an administrative office. That's the least of it. It's more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It's preeminently a place of moral leadership. All our great presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified. Certain historic ideas in the life of this nation had to be clarified.

We needed clarity on democracy. We needed clarity on unity. We needed clarity on civility. We needed clarity on honesty. And I'm not judging Joe Biden by the fact that he lost. I'm judging Joe Biden, or that Kamala Harris lost. I'm judging Joe Biden by the fact that he lied about, and everybody around him

lied about his deteriorating physical condition, that almost from the moment he entered office, Americans were less and less optimistic, less and less confident, less and less confident, less and less confident even the economy. And so, yes, while there might be certain long-term benefits from some of his infrastructure work, or even that is an open question, fundamentally, he didn't leave Americans feeling better off, respecting one another, and feeling a sense of commitment and confidence in this country. And that's a lost opportunity. Thank you, Gil, two terrific opening statements, nicely framing this debate.

Okay, let's go into a round of rebuttals now. Timothy, your opportunity to react to what you've just heard from Gil. You say that Biden failed to achieve unity. We haven't seen anything like unity or bipartisanship in Washington for at least 30 years. I think we saw some during the early days of the Clinton registration, although that deteriorated quickly. And since then, it's become practically a fact of life that no led to. No major legislation, anyway, passes on a bipartisan basis. It's always favored by whichever party has the majority in Congress and opposed by the minority.

That's certainly not something new, and it was overwhelmingly the case when Biden came in. He did come in pledging to create unity. He tried, and the public did not respond to that, did not fulfill that somewhat intangible goal. But to denounce Biden purely for being unpopular, I think, skips the substance of what he achieved. Again, I'm focusing here on the economy. He achieved quite a bit and the fact that voters never accepted that, that polls continue to show that they thought the economy was in bad shape when they were simply

wrong is something that historians will find interesting, but I don't think they will conclude that it means Biden was a bad president. With respect, I often blame the president more than I blame the voters. And when Ronald Reagan came in in 1980, it also looked like it was impossible to unite the country. And I certainly acknowledge there are structural issues in the country right now. There are ideological divisions in the country right now. But certainly in 1980, it didn't look like it was possible to unite the country. Certainly when Bill Clinton came in in 1992, 1993, it didn't look like it was easy to unite the country. But both of them sang a song of America.

And we didn't hear that. We heard silence. And then we saw stumbles. We also saw some tremendous acts of incompetence, such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I think I want to pull the camera back a little bit and give her wider lens and talk about some of this is foreign policy failures, even as I can acknowledge that by backing Israel and backing Ukraine, we saw the collapse of Syria. So again, I don't want to say that Joe Biden was a complete disaster, but if we're going to fundamentally focus on the competence that we sought, we didn't get it,

the calm that we saw it, we didn't get it. And then we also have to look at the fact that one of the things that was critical in this last election, but also through the four years, was the chaos at the borders. And part of it was that Joe Biden didn't want to replicate Donald Trump's policies. And so almost from the start, he was afraid to enact the necessary policies on the border that ultimately he realized he had to do, but it took them way too long, and it caused way too much chaos. And it, again, affected the soul of the country. So I think there were many substantive failures, and it led to a broader sense in the United States of America. There's something not going right here. And yes, Americans blamed him for the inflation. You know, there's a big debate.

we could spend much of the next three hours debating how much of the inflation was caused by COVID and how much the inflation was caused by some of these bills. And ultimately, as a historian, I say, we'll see the impact of these bills five, 10, 20 years down the pike. But again and again, Joe Biden disappointed. Again and again, Joe Biden didn't give Americans the unity, the calmness, the decency they needed. Thank you, Gail. Let me jump in with some questions that are top of mind for our listeners. And Timothy, let me come to you first with, I guess what's made news, Joe Biden's presidential pardon for his son, Hunter Biden.

This was something that, understandably, at a variety of different times, the president said that he would not do. He did end up providing a presidential pardon to his son. Situate this inside your argument that history will be kind to this president, because many people have seized on this event as exposing. in a sense, a less attractive feature of the Biden presidency, which was its tendency at times to say one thing and to do another, and often to do things that seemed to be in the self-interest,

sometimes the personal, the family interest of this president, let alone what might be his political interests. What's your response to that, Timothy? I would say that the Biden administration, I would concede that the Biden administration was not without weaknesses. And we saw a big one when he gave a pardon to his son. It was a terrible precedent to set. And it was particularly in the context of a moment when Democrats are trying very hard to demonstrate a superior commitment to rule of law compared to Donald Trump, who has very little regard for the rule of law.

It was a bad move. It actually helped Trump. It will give Trump some justification. for many of the ghastly things he intends to do. He stated that he intends to use the Justice Department as a tool for personal vengeance. And, you know, I would say, yes, there are flaws in Biden's presidency. One area where I would actually, where Gil is defending him and I would not,

concerns Israel policy. I think one of the great weaknesses in Biden's presidency was his failure to assert any control over Israel. And particularly, the one that really stunned me was after the election was over and there was nothing to lose politically. Biden had to sign off on Israel's compliance with a United States human rights law. And without that compliance, we couldn't supply non-defensive weapons to Israel. And the right move was to acknowledge that Israel was not in compliance. The cut-off off aid until it came into compliance. And Biden didn't do that. And I ranked that right up there with the Hunter Biden pardon as the two worst things that Biden did.

Gil, what's your reaction to the pardon? How will history look at this? Will it be a blip at the end of his administration? Will this end up being one of the more kind of consequential acts when historians come back decades in the future and try to understand the portent. the impact to the Biden presidency on America. Going into this conversation, I wanted to take a stand that wasn't based either on Joe Biden's chosen candidate or at least let's say his vice president, Pamela Harris losing, and I didn't want to respond simply to the pardon because I think the bigger issues are the ones that will ultimately indict him in the historical court. But when you talk about the pardon,

I agree there was a problem in that he consistently was trying to say, I'm not Donald Trump. I'm fixing democracy. We are the healing. And he said, I'm the man of unity. And yet when he was attacking a law that I also don't support, he used rhetoric such as this is Jim Crow in the 21st century. It must end and called it an atrocity.

That's not presidential language. That's Trumpian language. And again and again, we saw this weird dynamic in the Biden White House where while trying to say democracy dies in darkness, which is the Washington Post phrase, We were trying to say that we're taking the higher road. Again, again, the Biden administration was quite simply a typical, politically driven administration and didn't reset the button morally and didn't go beyond Trump's failures. And when Americans really needed that, and I think especially if we go back to the weeks

after January 6th, we're jonesing for it. Now, part of me is very disturbed by the growing criminalization of politics, and this goes back 30 or 40 or 50 years. And I have to say my first mischievous thought was once he's pardoned Hunter Biden, let him pardon Donald Trump. Let him pardon. If he wants to, there's, there are rumors that he might want to pardon some other people who might be in Trump's target range. Let him pardon the end. Let him pardon the January 6 people. Let's start from scratch. Let's stop this criminalization of politics. And again, that's just being mischievous. But I think we have to start thinking about the use of this pardon power and the growing power of the presidency. One of the things we also saw with Joe Biden was because he didn't trust the. people. He bypassed them again and again with executive orders. So the imperial presidency that we critiqued in the 1970s is back, and it came from Obama, and it came from Trump. And now it also

came from Biden. And one last thing, if I may, and I know we don't want to make this debate entirely about Israel. I think in these last couple of weeks, we've seen that Joe Biden's stance on Israel wasn't politically motivated. It was a moral stance, especially after October 7th. It was also a calculated stance because many of the critiques of Israel could also be applied to the way the United States has fought in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and elsewhere. And other democratic armies have fought that way. And we don't want to start having the UN Human Rights Court coming after the United States of America. And the third thing is we've actually seen two extraordinary strategic payoffs,

both with the defeat of Hezbollah and the collapse of Syria. So it's complicated. Timothy, let's come back to you and let's talk international affairs for a bit. because it's a big part of every president's legacy. How will they be perceived in terms of their actions on the world stage? Clearly, one of the big events of certainly the last two years has been the aftermath of the horrible attacks of October 7th, Israel's response to the war on Gaza,

and the Biden administration's attempts to hem in and contain this conflict de-escalating some of its potentially larger regional risks. how do you weigh or balance their accomplishments through this particular conflict of the last 18 or so months? I'm sorry, we're talking about Israel's accomplishments or but the Biden? Sorry, the Biden administration's accomplishments, America's accomplishments over the last 18 months. Well, I think that it started off well. I think the October 7th attacks were horrific and the United States weighed in initially with strong support. For Israel, which was entirely justified, Biden said Israel had a right to defend itself,

and it did have a right to defend itself. What happened over time was that what I assumed anyway would be a short war, became an endless war and a war with an unacceptable level of civilian casualties. And it became increasingly clear that the Israeli cabinet was entirely indifferent to the loss of civilian life in Gaza. And it did reach the point where I can't pinpoint it exactly, but as the civilian deaths accumulated and the military victories over Hamas became less significant, that one had to acknowledge that U.S. military support for this war violated the human rights statutes that I referred to before. And so at this point, I consider U.S. non-defensive aid to Israel to be

illegal. Thank you, Timothy Gill, to come back to you. You've got a proverbial hot seat in this debate. At least you're coming to us from Israel. So this is a reality that you've lived and so many other Israelis for the last 18 months or so. How do you gauge the performance of the Biden administration on the post-October 7th reality that Israel faced, at the world faced, and that the region, the Middle East faced. Before I get to Israel, let's talk about Afghanistan for just one moment. The chaos of the withdrawal, and of course it was Donald Trump's decision to withdraw, but the way it was done occurred under Biden's watch, I think broadcast a sense of weakness and incompetence to the entire world. A second dimension I want to bring in before we

get to Israel, which is Iran. When Joe Biden came into office, Iran had barely $4 billion of foreign reserves left. And Donald Trump, and I have many, many criticisms of Donald Trump, but in this case, Trump had put tremendous pressure, what he called maximum pressure on Iran. And over the last four years, we saw oil revenues in Iran go up over $50 billion. We saw Iran become more and more aggressive. And what Israel has faced has not just been the Hamas attack. of October 7th, as heinous as that was, but Israel and the United States and international shipping have been attacked by Houthis. We saw Iran unleash two unprecedented waves of intercontinental ballistic missiles and rockets against Israel, and we saw a remarkable act of international cooperation,

not just involving the United States, but also involving Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the European Union. And so in many ways, while I could certainly nitpick at various decisions that Joe Biden made, fundamentally, I think that by supporting Israel, and yes, it's been a long war. It's boy, let me tell you, speak to Israeli soldiers. They're certainly ready for it to finish. But they know that by putting pressure on Hamas in Gaza. And by the way, I don't speak for the Israeli cabinet. I have many criticisms, but I know Israeli soldiers take no joy in civilians killed, and we call them civilians killed. We don't play the American game of calling it collateral damage, or Barack Obama's game of not even counting the collateral damage that occurred under his watch. And all I can do is judge

Israel by the standards of the American army in Mosul, in other parts of Iraq, in Afghanistan. I know that General Tecumseh, William Tecunza- Sherman taught us that war is hell. And when we look at the astonishing number of deaths in this region, let's take the Hamas numbers of 40,000. 17,000 of them at least, are probably Hamas terrorists. That means a ratio of one, 1.5 civilians to one combatant. Horrific. But the ratio that the United Nations says is legitimate in urban warfare in its website goes to 6, 8, and 10 civilians per combatant.

And so we have to be very careful not to have a kind of idealistic perspective when judging Israel's action and when judging Biden's action. So again and again, when it came to pushing back against Iran, pushing back against the Houthis, Joe Biden not only had Israel's back, but Israel also mobilized Israel and the United States in a broader international coalition. And the results speak for themselves. In September, people fear Chazbalah. Chzbollah has now turned out into a paper tiger. No one imagined the impact this would have and also the impact that Ukraine war had on Russia and that on Syria that all this would have on the collapse of Syria. And now we're seeing in Iran, which was far more brazen, far more powerful, far more intimidating

a year and a half ago, now looking quite humiliated and quite weak. So has there been perfection on the other side? No, but it's funny. We've switched and here in this way, I will certainly give Joe Biden a lot of credit. But I worry overall that all too often the Biden administration was giving a sense of weakness, a sense of accommodation on foreign policy and not enough of a sense of a strength. Timothy, one of those areas of strength, though, that the Biden administration demonstrated in the world was its principled and significant opposition to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This president seemed heartfelt in his desire to defend the liberal international order. He certainly put a lot of American resources and prestige behind deterring Putin from conquering Ukraine.

As we wrap up his presidency, though, it's a strange moment, a moment where America has leaned into this conflict, like few others in recent years, with indirect support. yet Putin has made and continues to make significant advances on the ground. And, of course, hovering over all of this is the reality of a Trump administration in a matter of weeks and the potential of a forced or otherwise accommodation negotiation with Putin organized and orchestrated by Donald Trump. What do you make of all that? How should we assess the Biden administration's contributions to the Ukraine war? Well, before I get to the Ukraine war, I just want to make one point about Gaza, which is what is one thing that is quite different with Gaza with respect to previous wars is that you've got a civilian population that cannot leave, that they cannot become refugees and leave where they are. And that is a huge consideration. Also, I think, you know, there's a great deal of dispute about what the ratio is between civilian deaths and military. military deaths. So I wouldn't really accept that figure. But to move on to Ukraine, I think that, yes,

Biden has committed the United States to that fight to a much greater degree than I would have anticipated. And there were moments when it made me uncomfortable. I was a little fearful of a nuclear exchange. And I think that that was a case where Biden was right. And I think that that was a case where Biden was right and I was wrong. I didn't actually write about this, but I think he took a gamble and the gamble paid off. And even if Trump settles with Putin, the settlement will be made from a position of greater strength than would have been the case had Biden not pursued this war aggressively. Yeah. Gail, would you give Biden a win in the Ukraine column in terms of, you know, a principal defense, a defense at times that did take risks in terms of NATO and its potential

involvement in a conflict, a direct conflict with Russia. He seemed to navigate this situation remarkably well, escalating but not escalating too quickly, being sensitive to the dangers of the situation. And while Ukraine's future will now rest largely in the hands of Trump presidency, they are undoubtedly in a stronger position. They are standing today, largely in thanks to Joe Biden. Is that not the case? Absolutely. Let's take a step back during another difficult transition

when Dwight Eisenhower was furious that this young upstart named John Kennedy was taking the presidency from the Republicans, in this case from Richard Nixon, when Kennedy visited the White House, Eisenhower looked at the Oval Office and he said, you see that office? All the hard calls end up on our desks.

all the easy calls are made outside. And Ukraine, Gaza, the economy, these are post-COVID. We haven't mentioned, I think, that enough. These are difficult, agonizing moments in a presidency and difficult agonizing decisions for a presidency to make. Moreover, you know, I love to quote the former mayor of New York, Ed Koch, who said, if you agree with me on seven of 12 things, please vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 of 12 things, please see a psychiatrist.

And so we have to recognize that we live in this world of, you know, a lot of complexity and we're way too addicted to one way or the other. So, yes, it's very easy for me to say in a very difficult situation where indeed there was a fear about what point will Putin go that far and cross the nuclear line. I think Joe Biden handled Ukraine quite well. And I completely agree with Timothy that right now, whatever negotiations or blustering there will be with Trump, Zelensky, and Putin, Ukraine. And the world is in a much better position.

And I think it's important for us to say, yeah, you know, historians may ultimately not be that kind to Joe Biden, but a good historian with integrity sits with complexity and gives A's where A's are warranted, B's and C's and D's where they're warranted, and then gives an overall great point average. If you're enjoying the Monk Debates podcast, come over to our website at triple W monk debates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com and check out our free monk membership. As a complimentary monk member, you get all kinds of great perks and benefits, access to our weekly email, summarizing our best debates, and ticketing privileges at our main stage debates, special news information, and offers all courtesy of the monk debates.

You can grab your complimentary monk membership again right now at triple w monkdebates.com. Simply look to the top navigation on the website and follow the last. links. Thanks in advance for joining our community. In our remaining moments, let's just come back to probably what for many of our listeners will stand out as the most consequential set of decisions in the Biden presidency, which was his insistence on staying in the presidential race contention for a second term. Many people have hypothesized that there might have been an alternative future for the Democrats, for the Biden presidency, which would have liberated him and possibly his party by stating from the

outset or shortly into his presidency that he would be a one-term president and that he would have created the preconditions for a successful handoff to a new generation of leadership within the Democratic Party and potentially set the party up for, if not a victory in 2024 over Donald Trump, put it on a footing the best possible. footing to contend against Trump. None of that happened, Timothy. How do you feel about that? Do you think that that ultimately will be what Biden is remembered for a kind of failed handoff at the end of his presidency to a new generational politicians? And when facing real political threats, real economic threats that no doubt he was not discounting, yet nonetheless, he chose to

do what he did? I think there's a tragic irony here. I think the very fact that Biden was a very good president, particularly during the first two years, gave him a false sense of confidence that that would translate into political support. The string of bills that he got through Congress with the narrowest of Democratic majorities was remarkable. The Inflation Reduction Act, which of course had pretty much nothing to do with inflation, was nonetheless a major historically significant investment in green energy and accomplished a number of other significant goals, too. We didn't even talk about health care where Biden did a tremendous amount to nurse Obamacare back to health, and I think we can expect to see it get defunded again under Trump. He passed the

infrastructure bill that Trump couldn't get passed for four years. He passed the Chips Act, another historic investment in American technology. I think all of those accomplishments made him think that he should stay in the game and run again, and it was the wrong decision. people are never good judges. You know, I'm sure you've seen this in your life, too. As people get older, they tend to be the worst judges of their abilities. And particularly in Biden's case, Biden's ability to convey a sense of confidence in his abilities. I think the appearances were somewhat worse than the reality for Biden. But the reality was not optimal. And the appearances were terrible, and he was blind to that. And that was tragic. And he waited too long to get out. He had to get a very firm push from Nancy Pelosi and others, which could have happened much earlier. And as a result, we end up with Donald Trump back in the White House, which I judge an absolute catastrophe. Gil, you've studied presidents. How important is that handoff to how history looks at them? Are there presidents that still leap out of the pages of our history books but completely botched their own party's electoral prospects? Is this important? Maybe we're just focusing in the moment here and this isn't really what makes a president consequential or not?

Certainly, you know, I referred earlier to the presidential stock market that swings wildly. And we've even seen it with one of the more recent one-term president, George H.W. Bush, that his loss to Bill Clinton in 1992 meant everybody deemed him a failure because he didn't have the two terms that Ronald Reagan had. He didn't have the two terms that Clinton subsequently had. And it's been interesting to watch people go back and start seeing, oh, no, there were certain achievements that occurred under his watch. But I do fear that. or expect that in many ways Joe Biden will be linked with Jimmy Carter, who was also a one-term president and the loss to Ronald Reagan, who at the time was hated and feared when made Democrats

furious as well as historians say, what did he do to botch the job when it should have been so easy to beat this lunatic dumb right winger, which is the way Ronald Reagan was often characterized until eight years later, people had a different vision of him. So yes, being a one-term wonder is not a good thing and you end up with Martin Van Buren status. But I think we do have to go back. I think, Timothy, with due respect, you were just way too kind to the process around Biden, both the way he behaved and the people around him behaved. In February 2024, Special Counsel Robert Hur called President Biden, a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. All we heard was how agis that was and how horrific that was and how incorrect that was.

from the mainstream media, from the Biden people. In September 2020, and I have a healthy appreciation of my own insignificance, but in September 2020, I wrote an article in Newsweek saying that Kamala should quit so that Biden can retire, understanding that Biden was also looking at the historically low popularity of his vice president and wasn't about to get rid of Kamala, both because, I'm sorry to say, the DEI dynamics, as well as the fact that it would mean that his,

first decision appointing her as vice president would have deemed to be a failure. And I said, Kamala should pull back seeing how unpopular she is. So back in September 23, if you truly think that Donald Trump is the great threat that Joe Biden has said, and I quoted Biden both on that and on all his little feints that he would be a one-term president, I said, if that's the case, let him live up to his implicit promise and retire and she should quit and let's have an open Democratic primary. And Trump then might lose. And I was called racist and sexist and Trumpist and ageist. And I think we have to acknowledge the degree to which Joe Biden came in,

focused like a laser on helping America leave COVID, focused like a laser on getting those pieces of legislation passed. And I think we actually have to debate each one of the pieces of legislation rather than just listing them and assuming every one of them was good. But fundamentally, he didn't address not only the unity issues I was talking about earlier, but also some of the cultural toxins that had come into America. whatever you want to call it, wokeness or illiberal liberalism

or a kind of cancel culture where one couldn't even have a healthy conversation about the president of the United States obvious weakness and obvious debilitation because you're on one side or the other and it violated the code and it violated the tribe. And Joe Biden, the people around him, helped make these politics these days

even more tribal than they were going in. And that is, to me, a great mark against his character and against his legacy. see. Thank you, Gail. Okay, let's go to closing statements in this. Very civil. I appreciate it. And meaty debate. So, Timothy, a couple minutes on the show clock, just to wrap up your arguments for why history could, maybe should be kinder, gentler to Joe Biden than some might in the moment now. What's the key idea of the few thoughts that you most want to leave our listeners with? Well, one thing I'd like to leave listeners with is a response to the preview. because I think it's absurd to attribute queasiness about Biden's aging process to wokeism. We have a long history in this country of presidents being secretive and evasive about their health problems,

the most extreme example of which was Woodrow Wilson being barely functional at the end of his presidency. So to pretend that that was something new, you know, John F. Kennedy, hiding the fact that he was gravely ill throughout his presidency. This is nothing new. It's been a political problem since the beginning of time. That's not to excuse Biden, but it is to say that I can't think of any president in American history who acknowledged sufficiently whatever physical limitations he was struggling with. In terms of sort of broad statements, again, those three pieces of legislation that I mentioned earlier, the Inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure bill, and the chips bill, those were historic pieces of legislation. We're going to see massive

investments in the coming years that Trump is going to end up taking credit for, unless he has threatened it to halt the spending, but since most of the spending is in Republican districts, I have a very hard time believing that's going to happen. He's going to claim credit. for them. The credit will really reside with Biden, and it was a brilliant legislative accomplishment. He achieved things like getting Medicare to negotiate drug prices, something presidents have been trying to do going all the way back to George W. Bush. He got a cap on insulin, the cost of insulin, a drug that really shouldn't cost very much at all because the patent went off the original insulin years ago and even on the sort of various refinements.

In more recent years, the patents of those have fallen off mostly too. We saw an historic crackdown on antitrust, one that I think there's good chance Trump will continue because I think the pendulum has really swung there. We have a new approach to thinking about economic problems thanks to Joe Biden. And it's overdue. And I think historians will say that that turning point came during Biden's presidency. Nicely said, Timothy. Okay, Gil, we're going to give you the last word in this terrific debate.

Some of our audience. Your predictions about history's judgment of the Biden presidency. Indeed, that presidents lie and the people around them lie is not new. but the way they lie and the way their lies are backed up is unique to the moment. And that's where the wokeism and, again, some of the cultural issues came in. Franklin Farr, who wrote a very respectful and quite positive book about Joe Biden. The last politician had three different things that I've put together. He said, after Trump had unleashed the furies,

Biden's task was to restore as much calm as possible. Two, Biden believes that narrative is the foundation of good politics. And three, the promise of the Biden administration was competence. Joe Biden didn't tell an overarching story about America and didn't bring Americans back to their pride in their story. Joe Biden at the border in Afghanistan and elsewhere didn't bring either calm or competence. And I do think that there's lots of room to debate about his economic legislation. I worry a little bit about the Europeanization of American politics and the American economy, because we do see that Europe is not fostering the same kind of innovation and the same kind of startups that the United States of America is.

So I still think there are debates to be had about each one of those pieces of legislation. But fundamentally, I go back to the question that Ronald Reagan asked in 1980 and that Donald Trump very mischievously repeated, do Americans feel that they were better off today than they were four years ago? and too many Americans, and again, we should point out it was a deeply divided country. Part of the reason why I didn't want to build my argument based on election days, we know how quickly things could have shifted. But fundamentally, that on election day, most Americans didn't feel good about the economy, and most Americans didn't feel good about the direction of their country, and more Americans had joined the Republican Party than the Democratic Party was a verdict of the people.

And yes, historians will be in love with the different pieces of legislation, but fundamentally history, not historians, will say Joe Biden, nice guy, good person, made some good moves, but fundamentally didn't bring America back and didn't bring America to a place where it could look at the aggressiveness and the vulgarity of Donald Trump and say, we don't want to go there. And so, yes, the final act has to do with the rise of Trump. but at any point in the last four years, we saw again, again, how unpopular Biden was, how unpopular Kamala Harris was

because they didn't make the case to the people. And we have to stop saying, oh, it must be the people's fault. We have to say, what did the politicians? What did our leaders do? Not to raise the bar, not to unite us, as Franklin Roosevelt did, as Abraham Lincoln did, as Ronald Reagan did, as Bill Clinton did. And as we need a new president to do.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Gil, for that. masterful sum up. Timothy, for your remarks and contributions. This was just the kind of civil and substantive debate that we hope to have on this important topic. So on behalf of the monks' debates community, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Timothy Noah and Gil Troy. They certainly gave us a lot to think about. A reminder that if you are a free member, you can vote on who you think won today's debate. Was it Timothy? Maybe Gill, you tell us.

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