George H.W. Bush didn’t swagger. He didn’t have the “vision thing,” as he put it. He didn’t cut taxes. He presided over a recession. He seemed out of touch with the concerns of average Americans. He wasn’t a natural cultural warrior. No wonder he lost his bid for re-election in 1992.
But history has been kinder to him than the voters. He wasn’t responsible for the collapse of communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, but he easily could have screwed it up, and he didn’t. He also managed to create the coalition that threw Saddam out of Kuwait, and unlike his son, he knew when to stop. In foreign policy, at least, he was a big winner.
I think Biden will be treated by history in much the same way. Both he and Bush were decent, mostly successful, transitional presidents who were doomed in their individual ways by circumstances beyond their control and by their inability to inspire the American public.