Presidential aides were in a state of nervous anticipation in the weeks leading up to the publication of Franklin Foer's new book, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future. The book is the first insider account of President Joe Biden's first two years in office, based on nearly 300 deep background interviews. Politico Playbook reported that "In Washington, the book will be a test for how a generally leak-proof White House grapples with the first detailed excavation of its successes and failures from the Inaugural through the midterms," and added that "In recent days Biden aides have been scrambling to secure a password-protected PDF of the book."
Franklin Foer is a longtime Washington, D.C. journalist and staff writer at The Atlantic magazine. He was for many years a staff writer at The New Republic, along with briefer stints at Slate and New York magazine, and twice served as editor of The New Republic. He is the author of several books, including How Soccer Explains the World and World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech.
In this podcast episode, Foer discusses why he thinks Biden "is inherently more interesting than the public or pundits assume he is," how he came to write the book, and why he chose to focus on episodes from the early Biden presidency including the administration's response to the ongoing COVID pandemic, the disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the struggle to pass critical legislation, particularly the Build Back Better bill that eventually became the Inflation Reduction Act. Foer also talks about why Biden is a difficult boss who nonetheless inspires fierce loyalty from his closest circle of aides, the tradeoffs involved with Biden's age, the question of whether Biden can accurately be described as a moderate or centrist, and why Biden has struggled with public perceptions of his presidency.
The Vital Center