Why Biden's Transformational Presidency Failed Politically—And What It Means for Democracy Everywhere
After 18 months of research, I found the gap between governance and politics is wider than ever. Here's what I learned
In January 2021, Joe Biden inherited a country in crisis. Four thousand Americans were dying daily from COVID-19. Unemployment was at 6.7%. The Capitol had been stormed just two weeks earlier. America’s alliances were shattered, and democracy itself felt fragile.
Four years later, when Biden left office in January 2025, the numbers told a remarkable story:
15.3 million jobs created—more than any president in a single term. Unemployment at 3.4%, the lowest rate in 50 years. 230 million Americans vaccinated. $2.4 trillion invested in infrastructure, climate action, and semiconductor manufacturing. NATO expanded with Finland and Sweden. The most diverse federal judiciary in American history, including the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
By any historical measure, this was a consequential presidency.
Yet Biden left office with a 37% approval rating. Voters rejected his party decisively in 2024. When Americans were asked about his presidency, the most common response wasn’t about his achievements—it was about the price of groceries.
How does a president deliver transformational policy and still fail politically?
I spent 18 months trying to answer that question. I read all 362 bills Biden signed into law. I tracked every one of his 143 executive orders. I interviewed more than 50 administration officials, policy experts, and political strategists. I analyzed four years of economic data, polling, and legislative records.
What I found isn’t just a story about Joe Biden. It’s a story about the fundamental tension between governance and politics in modern democracies—a tension that’s playing out not just in America, but around the world.
The Infrastructure Paradox
Take infrastructure. Biden passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in November 2021—$1.2 trillion for roads, bridges, broadband, clean water, and electric vehicle charging stations. It was the largest infrastructure investment since Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s.
And it was genuinely bipartisan. Nineteen Republican senators voted for it, including Mitch McConnell. In an era of tribal partisan warfare, Biden proved Congress could still function on issues that mattered.
But here’s the problem: by the time Biden left office in January 2025, only 15% of that $1.2 trillion had actually been spent.
Most of the projects funded by the bill won’t be completed until 2028, 2030, or even 2032. The bridges being repaired, the broadband being installed, the lead pipes being removed—all of it will happen long after Biden left office.
He passed the law. Future presidents will cut the ribbons.
Voters in 2024 didn’t see finished bridges. They saw construction delays, traffic jams, and higher tolls. They experienced the pain of infrastructure work without yet receiving the benefits.
This is the paradox of long-term governance in a short-term political system. Biden bet on America’s future. Elections reward the present.
When Good Economics Becomes Bad Politics
Or consider the economy. The data shows Biden presided over one of the strongest job markets in modern American history. Fifteen million jobs created. The unemployment rate dropped from 6.7% to 3.4%. The manufacturing sector added 800,000 jobs after decades of decline.
But voters didn’t feel it.
Why? Because while the job market was strong, prices were brutal. Grocery costs rose 25%. Rent increased 28%. Gas hit $5 per gallon in summer 2022. For most American families, it didn’t matter that unemployment was low if they couldn’t afford to fill their grocery carts.
Biden’s team kept pointing to the jobs numbers. “Look at the data,” they said. “The economy is strong.”
But voters weren’t looking at employment statistics. They were looking at their receipts.
This is where I think Biden’s team made a critical mistake. They assumed that if they explained the economy well enough, voters would understand their success. They treated it as a messaging problem when it was actually a reality problem.
Yes, Biden created millions of jobs. And yes, prices rose significantly. Both of those things are true. But only one of them determined how voters felt about the economy.
Politics isn’t about data. It’s about how data makes people feel.
The COVID Victory Nobody Remembers
Perhaps nothing illustrates this disconnect better than COVID.
Biden’s vaccination campaign was objectively successful. When he took office, 1 million vaccines were being administered daily amid organizational chaos. By summer 2021, that number hit 3 million daily. Schools reopened. Deaths plummeted. Epidemiological models estimate Biden’s vaccination push saved 2.2 million American lives.
Two million Americans are alive today because of the decisions Biden made.
Yet he received almost no political credit for it.
Why? Because the pandemic didn’t end cleanly. Delta came. Then Omicron. Then more variants. Each wave reminded voters of the pandemic’s disruption. Meanwhile, the inflation partially caused by pandemic-era economic relief became the dominant economic story.
Voters remembered the variants. They forgot the vaccines.
Biden beat COVID in early 2021. But COVID’s political shadow haunted his entire presidency.
A Global Pattern
This disconnect between governance and politics isn’t uniquely American. Similar patterns are visible in democracies worldwide.
In Kenya, President William Ruto has pursued economic reforms that economists generally support—floating the currency, removing fuel subsidies, and broadening the tax base. These are structural changes that international financial institutions recommend.
Yet in June 2024, as widely reported, Kenya’s Gen Z took to the streets. They stormed Parliament. They rejected a finance bill that, from a technocratic standpoint, addressed fiscal challenges but, from the perspective of young Kenyans already struggling economically, felt like yet another burden.
The pattern mirrors what happened in America: technically sound governance that fails politically because it doesn’t address what people actually experience in their daily lives.
Similar dynamics are visible across Africa. In Uganda, President Museveni has maintained power for 40 years, partly by delivering infrastructure and development, even while democratic institutions have weakened. According to international observers, his January 2026 election victory came with the lowest voter turnout in Uganda’s history—52%—suggesting a population increasingly disengaged from a political process they see as predetermined.
Meanwhile, China’s Belt and Road Initiative delivers visible infrastructure across the African continent—roads, railways, ports that people can see and use—while Western aid often comes packaged with governance conditions and lectures about democracy.
The common thread: visible, tangible delivery matters more than abstract principles, even when those principles are sound.
The Central Question
This brings me to the question at the heart of my new book, “The Weight of the Biden Presidency: Power, Repair, and the Strain of Governance in a Fractured America,” which launches in three to four days.
How do democracies govern for the long term when elections reward the short term?
How do leaders make necessary but unpopular decisions when voters punish anything that causes immediate pain?
How does governance succeed when politics demands instant gratification?
I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I’ve spent 18 months documenting how one president tried to navigate these impossible tradeoffs—and why, despite historic achievements, he ultimately failed politically.
The book isn’t a defense of Biden. It’s not an attack on Biden. It’s an honest examination of what happened, why it happened, and what it means for democracies everywhere.
Because the challenge Biden faced isn’t unique to America. It’s the central challenge facing every democracy in the 21st century.
What’s Coming
Over the coming weeks and months on this Substack, I’ll be diving deep into the themes from my research:
- Why voters punish inflation but ignore unemployment gains
- How infrastructure politics rewards the wrong presidents
- What democratic governments can learn from authoritarian infrastructure delivery
- Why youth uprisings from Nairobi to Washington share common roots
- How the gap between governance and politics threatens democracy worldwide
My book, “The Weight of the Biden Presidency: Power, Repair, and the Strain of Governance in a Fractured America,” launches in three to four days. But the conversation it starts needs to continue long after.
Because understanding what happened with Biden helps us understand what’s happening in democracies around the world—from the United States to Kenya, from Uganda to France.
Democracy is under strain. Not because people don’t want it, but because it’s struggling to deliver what people need when they need it.
That’s the weight modern governance carries.
And that’s what we need to understand if democracy is going to survive.
Subscribe to follow along. The book drops in three to four days, but this is just the beginning of a much longer conversation.
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Patrick Machayo is the author of “The Weight of the Biden Presidency: Power, Repair, and the Strain of Governance in a Fractured America,” launching in three to four days. He is Executive Director of the National Association of Empowerment of Veterans and author of “Faux News: Mau-mauing in the Era of Trump and Biden.” Based in Philadelphia, his analysis spans American politics and global governance challenges.