Biden Returns to a Vastly Different Presidency With Six Months to Go

WASHINGTON — Even though he is no longer a candidate for reelection, President Joe Biden insists that he is “not going anywhere,” and it is true that his lease on the White House has another six months, or roughly an eighth of his entire term.

But when his motorcade pulled into the White House gates on Tuesday for the first time since he withdrew from the race, Biden returned to a vastly different presidency. He is now that creature most dreaded in the Oval Office: a lame duck, a commander in chief on the way out who is being challenged to assert his relevance even as the world moves on.

Traditionally, it has been the most frustrating period of a president’s time in office. The spotlight turns toward potential successors; lawmakers would rather rush home to campaign than pass major legislation; and world leaders strategize over how to deal with the next administration while looking for ways to make introductions.

“Think how disappointed President Biden must be,” said Barbara A. Perry, co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. He was forced “to drop out of a race he relished against his nemesis, seeing and feeling himself aging out of the profession to which he has dedicated his entire adult life, and knowing that whatever little power he had left in his term he has now utterly sacrificed by withdrawing from the 2024 contest.”

Like his predecessors, Biden has vowed not to be shunted to the sidelines. In a post on social media Tuesday shortly before returning from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he spent six days recovering from COVID and recalibrating his future, the president said he would address the nation from the Oval Office at 8 p.m. Wednesday. He said the address would discuss “what lies ahead, and how I will finish the job for the American people.”

He made clear in a phone call to his old campaign headquarters Monday that he still harbors hope for progress. “I’ve got six months left of my presidency, and I’m determined to get as much done as I possibly can, both foreign policy and domestic policy,” he said, citing initiatives to curb gun violence, expand child care and elder care, lower the cost of prescription drugs and stem climate change.

He also mentioned efforts to broker a cease-fire in Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, expressing optimism that it may come soon. “We got to keep working for an end to the war in Gaza,” Biden said. “I’ll be working very closely with the Israelis and with the Palestinians to try to work out how we can get the Gaza war to end and the Middle East peace and get all those hostages home. I think we’re on the verge of being able to do that.”

But he will get a sense of how difficult that may be Thursday, when he meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Netanyahu has not been particularly deferential to the president on the Gaza war and may now have even more reason to hedge, on the theory that he could get a better deal from former President Donald Trump if he reclaims the office.

“Very often, particularly on foreign policy, being a lame duck doesn’t erase the challenges that existed before,” said Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University. He cited efforts late in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s tenure to end the Vietnam War and in President Bill Clinton’s to finalize a Middle East peace agreement.

“Being a lame duck might free up the departing president, but also emboldens opponents at home and abroad who no longer fear that person,” Zelizer said. “The result is more might-have-beens than breakthrough moments.”

One exception, Zelizer and others noted, is the use of executive power, which does not require approval of Congress. An executive order is being prepared for Biden on how to manage the national security risks of artificial intelligence. But in many cases, such orders can be easily reversed by a future president with a different agenda.

“The legislative opportunities for Biden are no more, but he’ll be able to fully focus on accelerating the implementation of the policies and investments of all his signature accomplishments,” said Joel P. Johnson, who was a senior White House adviser to Clinton.

Biden’s return to the White House on Tuesday was the first time he had been seen in public since late Wednesday, when he disembarked from Air Force One at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware looking frail and uncertain and having just tested positive for COVID.

Arriving back at Dover on Tuesday for the flight home, Biden was wearing a suit and tie along with his signature aviator sunglasses. “I’m feeling well,” he told reporters, giving a thumbs-up sign. After landing at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland outside Washington, he was asked about his upcoming address. “Watch and listen. Why don’t you wait and hear what I say?”

Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the White House physician, said in a statement that after treatment with Paxlovid, the president’s “symptoms have resolved” and he had tested negative for COVID. “Over the course of his infection, he never manifested a fever, and his vital signs remained normal, to include pulse oximetry,” O’Connor wrote. “His lungs remained clear,” and he “continues to perform all of his presidential duties.”

While Biden has said he planned to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris, the president has canceled his travel schedule for the rest of the week, including several campaign fundraisers. After his meeting with Netanyahu, he plans to retreat to Camp David on Friday for the weekend.

Even as he maps out an agenda for his final stretch in office, unexpected events may yet shape the next few months.

President George W. Bush’s final months in office were dominated by the financial collapse of 2008, and he was forced to press Congress to approve a $700 billion bailout package to save the financial industry.

The plan was wildly unpopular, and a lame-duck Bush had to expend all the political capital he had left to push it through, determined, as he told an aide, to be another Franklin D. Roosevelt, not another Herbert Hoover. As one former Bush aide noted Tuesday, it took the threat of another Great Depression to pass the measure — and even then it took two tries.

With wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza, an explosive crisis in the next six months is hardly unthinkable. But Biden does not want to simply react to events; he wants to leave legacy-building achievements on top of the accomplishments of his first 3 1/2 years.

Just stopping the Gaza war, crucial as that would be, would not be enough in this formulation. Biden’s most ambitious agenda item before leaving office in January may be something much bigger — a realignment of the Middle East in which Saudi Arabia recognizes Israel in return for a pathway to a Palestinian state and expansive security and nuclear agreements with the United States.

Such a deal has become a passionate goal for Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser. Quietly, administration officials have been trying to revive that agreement over the past month, hoping to announce a pact that would also give them some leverage in dealing with Israel over how it handles the war with Hamas.

But it was far from clear that it would come to fruition. In the same way, it seems doubtful that President Vladimir Putin of Russia will pursue any peace agreement with Ukraine without waiting for the election results, because Trump has insisted he would end the war “in 24 hours.”

The fastest way to do so would be to cede territory to Putin that Russia has already seized — a little less than 20% of the country — and reduce or terminate U.S. military help to Ukraine.

The most important unknown factor for a lame-duck president, of course, is who wins the election to succeed him, which will be a major priority for Biden through Nov. 5. That will determine whether the final 10 weeks are about managing a smooth transition to a like-minded successor or finding ways to rush as much change as possible before Trump’s next Inauguration Day.

“In some transitions of power, an outgoing president can look forward to his or her legacy being continued or ideally enhanced; in others, a legacy can be erased or completely reversed,” said Corey L. Brettschneider, a Brown University professor and author of “The Presidents and the People,” a new book on threats to democracy. “The difference depends of course on who the successor president is — an ally or an opponent.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .