Joe Biden’s Legacy Is Zeroing Out

It seems that even his friends and allies don’t want to be associated with the 46th president.

The most generous spin on the legacies of American presidents can ordinarily be found at presidential libraries and museums. Never is heard a discouraging word about that select group of men who rose to the pinnacle of power when one visits exhibits celebrating their years in office. Tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of private funding generally start flowing into the White House in or shortly after the final year of a president’s administration and continue well into his retirement. That has been the case with the last 15 leaders of the free world going back almost a full century, whether the chief executive’s legacy was largely positive, as with Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, or decidedly negative, in the case of Herbert Hoover or Richard Nixon. But there is one glaring exception: Joe Biden.

In fact, in the 11 months since he abandoned the Oval Office, the 46th president has come up empty in efforts to secure his legacy with the Biden Presidential Library. And while there is still plenty of time for more contributions to come flowing in, the signs are ominous and the message clear: It seems no one, including longtime friends and allies, is interested in honoring the man or his failed administration.

One might argue that, since he was only a one-term president, Biden was bound to have difficulty raising the many millions necessary to build a monument to himself. However, not counting John F. Kennedy, who was martyred after being cut down by an assassin’s bullet, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush, all of whom served just four years (or in LBJ’s case, just over five years), were able to raise millions of dollars for their presidential libraries and museums.

Running on Empty

Almost one year after leaving office, the Joseph R. Biden Presidential Library reports that not a single dime was raised in 2024. Zero. The only funds made available for the library that year were $4 million left over from Biden’s inaugural fund. And Biden’s foundation has told the IRS that it expects to raise a pitiable total of just $11.3 million by the end of 2027, more than two years from now. Judging by the statements of several of Biden’s longtime benefactors, that is somewhat shocking but hardly surprising.

Most of the more than half a dozen people who were once major Biden donors or bundlers told NBC News that they either wouldn’t give to the library or would give only a token amount. And it gets worse. “I want an $800,000 refund,” said John Morgan, a Florida-based personal injury lawyer. Morgan, long a major supporter of the 46th president, raised nearly $1 million for Biden that ultimately went to then-Vice President Kamala Harris after she was selected to replace Biden as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Particularly damning was Morgan’s conclusion: “I don’t believe a library will ever be built unless it’s a bookmobile from the old days.”

Another donor, a bundler who also worked in the Biden administration, minced no words about whether he plans to contribute: “Me? No Way.” According to NBC, “Some [potential contributors] cited personal interactions with Biden’s inner circle as being so distasteful they believed it would be a barrier to ever raising significant funds for the 46th president of the United States.”

The Sad and Tragic Legacy of Joe Biden

Rufus Gifford, chairman of the Biden library board, has reportedly set a fundraising goal of $200-$300 million. But that seems like a fantasy at this point, as Democrats far and wide remain bitter about Biden’s decision to seek a second term and his late withdrawal from the race that led to the election of Donald Trump. And that goal is far less than the $850 million required to build the Obama Presidential Center, which is set to open in Chicago next spring. In contrast, the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, which opened in 2013, cost roughly $250 million ($350 million in today’s dollars).

Citing his age and medical issues, Morgan believes Biden will not be much help raising money for the library. “Couple that with the perception that [the party’s] woes rest with his decision to seek a second term and we have the Hindenburg heading straight towards us.”

According to The New York Times, there is now talk among some Biden donors of a far less ambitious, and likely more realistic, goal: merging a privately funded Biden Library with the existing, publicly funded Biden School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware.

Chris Korge, Democratic National Committee fundraising chair, said he advised Biden aides that “if Biden didn’t run [in 2024] he would go out as a hero, and he could focus the last two years of his term on setting himself up to raise a lot of money for the library.” But ever since Biden decided, against all advice to the contrary, to seek four more years in the White House, he has been in a downward spiral that continues unabated, with a near-universal lack of interest or support for the building honoring the man and his administration. It is a sad legacy for a presidency best described as tragic – for both the 46th president and the country.