PETER VAN ONSELEN: Joe Biden has destroyed his legacy with his hubris. He is doomed to be the ‘forgotten president’ – and Jill let it happen

Fifty years from now, maybe less, it will be a trivia night question that few will be able to answer: Who was the American president between Donald Trump’s two terms in the White House?

Political pundits will remember it, albeit not fondly. Some people may vaguely remember that it was an old white man losing his marbles, but without remembering his name.

However, most will have no idea about it. Certainly not outside America, where they certainly teach their political history better than in places like Australia.

Ask an Australian to name ten Prime Ministers and see how they go!

The point is that Joe Biden’s political legacy is now in tatters, torn to shreds by Trump’s emphatic victory on Tuesday.

The value of Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump was that he was removed from office and Trump was consigned to the political dustbin.

That was certainly the belief among his followers. After the January 6 riots at the Capitol, many more Americans felt the same way.

Yet here we are, almost four years later, and Trump has won a resounding victory over Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris.

The value of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory (above, at his 2021 inauguration) was that he consigned Donald Trump to the dustbin of history. Yet here we are

Trump won both the popular vote and the Electoral College. The Republicans won the Senate and counting continues to see if they have won the House of Representatives.

No matter how you look at it, Trump is the victor and the Democrats as a party are the vanquished.

Biden bears the loss more than anything. Even more so than Harris, who despite being a disappointing vice president, was thrown into the fray 100 days before the election because the aging Joe Biden couldn’t handle it.

The president should have announced months earlier, if not years, that he would not seek a second term.

It would have allowed Democrats to go through a full primary selection process to appoint a worthy successor. Someone they knew could beat Trump.

The fact that Biden held on for too long and then relented when it was too late to secure a Democratic victory is pretty much the only thing anyone will remember about him now.

A political career that began in 1973 and included eight years as vice president and four as president has been reduced to this.

It’s worse than a Greek tragedy.

For Trump opponents, Biden would have been better off if he had lost in 2020. If that had happened, we would be saying goodbye to the Trump era now, instead of ushering in another four years.

Trump’s opponents will worry about what he might do after the defeat he suffered and was ousted four years ago.

Where was Joe Biden’s wife, Jill, when the president needed her candid and fearless advice?

If he had won then, that wouldn’t be a problem.

The whole point of Biden running for president, in the eyes of Democrats, was to end Trump’s political career.

But by letting hubris get the better of him and insisting that he was not too old or too frail to run again, nor was he suffering from cognitive decline, Biden has continued his own long and thus far distinguished legacy in the American politics destroyed.

Where were his wife, his family, friends and close associates when he needed their frank and fearless advice to announce his retirement from running a year ago?

They abandoned him.

So here we are. Trump is back with a mandate he could only dream of when he first became president.

What will he do with it? Tariffs and stricter border protection appear to be the two most likely policy scripts to succeed. American isolationism also seems likely.

We’ll find out soon enough what his cabinet will look like, and how he really controls the Republicans in Congress.

It will also be interesting to see how JD Vance develops as a political leader as Vice President. Whether he shines and becomes Trump’s natural successor, or falls out with the boss as his last Vice President Mike Pence ultimately did.

Meanwhile, Trump’s opponents still have four years to be outraged by his actions and antics.

Biden, for his part, will retire in disgrace. The forgotten president who was stuck between the Trump years, nothing more.