As he prepares to deliver an Oval Office address for the last time after a single term in the White House and a full half-century of service in the federal government, President Joe Biden declared Tuesday that America now stands “stronger, more prosperous, and more secure” than it was when he entered office amid the tumult of the Covid-19 pandemic four years ago.
In a letter released by the White House ahead of his farewell address to the nation on Wednesday, Biden described the circumstances under which he was sworn in as president as “a winter of peril and a winter of possibilities.”
“We were in the grip of the worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” noted Biden, who added that in response, Americans “came together … and we braved through it.”
Biden wrote that the U.S. now boasts “the strongest economy in the world,” thanks in part to the 16.6 million new jobs created under his leadership. He is the only American president in modern history to see job growth during each month of his term.
The president also noted that American workers’ wages have risen while inflation has fallen from the peaks it hit amid supply-chain pressures and higher energy costs drove prices up around the world. Biden also declared that the “racial wealth gap” has reached what he called the lowest level of the last two decades.
“We’re rebuilding our entire nation — urban, suburban, rural, and Tribal communities. Manufacturing is coming back to America. We’re leading the world again in science and innovation, including the semiconductor industry. And we finally beat Big Pharma to lower the cost of prescription drugs for seniors. More people have health insurance today in America than ever before,” Biden wrote.
Biden listed his administration’s successes just hours before he’s set to deliver his televised farewell address to the nation at 8 p.m. (ET) Wednesday.
The speech will be delivered from behind the iconic desk hewn from timbers salvaged from H.M.S. Resolute and gifted to then-president Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880. The address, there, was once a common feature in presidential traditions, but it has become increasingly rare in recent years.
Biden’s two most recent predecessors, former president Barack Obama and former president (now President-elect) Donald Trump, only made six televised Oval Office speeches between the two of them.
And since becoming president, Biden has more or less followed their example.
His farewell speech will be his fifth from the Oval Office, with the most recent being the address he delivered to explain his unprecedented decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race and cede his party’s nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Echoing the stump speech he employed in his successful 2020 campaign against Trump, Biden noted in his letter Tuesday that he ran for president that year because he believed that “the soul of America” and “the very nature of who we are” were both at stake.
Now, with just days remaining until he turns over the reins of the presidency to Trump, Biden said he still believes that to be the case.
But the 82-year-old outgoing president also struck a more optimistic note, writing that the country “is an idea stronger than any army and larger than any ocean.” He called out the creed laid out by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: Tha Americans are “all created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — the “most powerful idea in the world,” he added.
“We’ve never fully lived up to this sacred idea, but we’ve never walked away from it, either. And I do not believe the American people will walk away from it now,” he said.
“It has been the privilege of my life to serve this nation for over 50 years. Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as President of the United States. I have given my heart and my soul to our nation. And I have been blessed a million times in return with the love and support of the American people,” Biden said.
He added: “History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands. We just have to keep the faith and remember who we are. We are the United States of America, and there is simply nothing beyond our capacity when we do it together.”
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