Next week American President-elect Donald Trump will drop the “elect,” and President Joe Biden will pick up “former” before his name. Coming into the White House, Biden said he would “restore America’s soul,” expunge Trumpism from the American body politic, and restore relations with European allies. In doing so, he portrayed Trump as an interregnum between two progressive presidents (Obama and himself). But four years later, it is Biden who was made into an interregnum between two Trump presidencies.

Biden’s confidence was somewhat strange. Trump, in the midst of a pandemic and spuriously changed voting rules, barely lost to Biden in the electoral college (a total of about 40,000 votes across three states got Biden the win). Biden was also the oldest man to take office and did not always seem there at times.

But even stranger was Europe’s reaction to Biden’s victory. Boris Johnson, then serving as UK prime minister, said Biden was “a breath of fresh air.” The New York Times reported that Biden’s 2020 win resulted in a “sigh of relief” from European Union leadership. Even far into Biden’s re-election campaign, after the disaster of the Afghanistan withdrawal, the allowing of millions to illegally enter the United States, and anemic approval ratings, European leaders still were bafflingly bonded to Biden. In June 2024, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Biden “very clear” and said he knew “exactly what he is doing,” expressing his belief Biden would win the election in November. He dropped out of the race about a month later.