President Joe Biden released a farewell letter to the nation claiming various domestic policy and foreign policy wins as President-Elect Donald Trump prepares for his return to office next week.
Biden said in the lengthy letter that “the privilege of my life” was serving as commander-in-chief, reflecting on his “modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware,” before he sat behind “the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as President of the United States.”
“America is an idea stronger than any army and larger than any ocean. It’s the most powerful idea in the history of the world,” Biden said in the letter. “That idea is that we are all created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We’ve never fully lived up to this sacred idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either. And I do not believe the American people will walk away from it now.”
The letter also claimed that “wages are up” and that “inflation continues to come down” as the Biden administration concludes, even after four years of elevated prices relative to the years before the lockdown-induced recession. The document lauded his legislative victories, such as the American Rescue Plan and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as improving the economy.
Various efforts to maintain “an unwavering focus on terrorism and working both unilaterally and with partners to disrupt threats around the globe” were mentioned in the letter, but the document did not mention the withdrawal from Afghanistan four years ago, after which the national government of the South Asian country immediately collapsed and the Taliban rose to power.
An extensive portion of the letter discussed his “unprecedented executive action” to protect abortion after the Supreme Court moved to overturn Roe v. Wade, including federal efforts to guarantee “safe and legal medication abortion,” as well as moves to “defend access to emergency abortion care” and partner with “state leaders on the frontlines of abortion access.”
Biden also discussed his efforts to affirm homosexuality and transgenderism, including by signing the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which repealed the Defense of Marriage Act and required every state to recognize so-called same-sex marriages.
Americans currently report that they believe history will remember Biden as a particularly bad commander-in-chief relative to his predecessors, according to one recent survey, in which Biden was ranked “below average” or “poor” by some 57% of respondents, decisively outweighing the 19% of respondents who believe he was an “above average” or “outstanding” leader.
