Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:
Well, certainly, in this most recent era, where we have had some pretty young presidents, we also have Bill Clinton, who left office in his 50s, much like Jimmy Carter did, who’s been able to watch his own legacy be written and rewritten almost every few years, George W. Bush also leaving office at a relatively young age, and, of course, Barack Obama.
So this is unique in our recent era, but we have certainly had presidents who, soon after they left office, maybe they were defined by — I’m thinking of Lyndon Baines Johnson — things about their presidency that were the most unpopular, and then years and years and years later, their legacy is redefined by some of the other accomplishments they had.
I think what’s also fascinating in looking at Biden and Carter in the same lens for a second, both of them were felled by a similar issue, which is inflation, both of them as one-term presidents. But if you look back and you look at what happened with Jimmy Carter, both when he came into office and after he left, he was really an outsider and really enjoyed and embraced that outsiderness, going back to Plains, Georgia, of course, right after he left the White House.
Biden will be remembered for being the consummate insider whose life was defined by Washington.
