What Biden Didn’t Realize About His Presidency
In his first interview after his inauguration, Biden explained what he got wrong about Trump—and what he still hoped to squeeze out of Republicans.
Joe Biden had been president for less than two weeks when he told me something he’d heard from a friend after the election. Biden was like the dog that caught the car, the friend told him—after a lifetime of dreaming of becoming president, he’d finally done it. “I said, ‘No, I think I got the bus,’” Biden told me, reflecting on the combined crises of the pandemic, the economic collapse, and the shaky future of American democracy. “I’m the dog that caught the bus.”
This isn’t the presidency Biden had expected when he entered the race two years ago. He had expected that his task would be reorienting American politics away from Donald Trump’s influence and rebuilding the
