Political career marked by both tragedy and success

Joe Biden spent half a century in front-line politics, but in the end his experience weighed him down

- Richard Hall

Joe Biden entered politics as one of the youngest senators in American history, and he leaves as its oldest president.

Few others have had such a sweeping view of what moves people and power in this country. He held a front-row seat to great shifts in America’s culture and identity, from the height of its post-Cold War strength to a nation in conflict with itself.

In the end, that experience weighed him down. At 81 years old, with more than 50 of those spent in frontline national politics, he was reluctant to pass on the torch because he believed those years mattered above all else. “I have acquired a hell of a lot of wisdom and know more than the vast majority of people,” Mr Biden said in an interview last year when questions about his age were becoming harder to ignore. “And I’m more experienced than anybody that’s ever run for the office.”

But besides the physical and mental toll of aging, this long view of the world and his country blinded him to how much both had changed. It showed in the last year in his handling of the war in Gaza, which seemed to be shaped by his relationship with an Israel that no longer existed – one where the US supported an ostensibly liberal state in wars against its autocratic Arab neighbours, not a far-right government against a largely defenceless population.

It showed in his belief that he could oversee a return to normalcy after the presidency of Donald Trump and an attempted insurrection, when the mood of much of the country had fundamentally shifted. And it showed in his inability to notice that he had lost the support of his party in these last few weeks and months.

This was not always true. Mr Biden’s experience was a superpower for much of his career and the beginning of his first term. In the first years of his presidency, he used it to great effect in passing a series of laws and delivering on key campaign promises, even with a razor-thin majority in the House and Senate.