Joe Biden said in his farewell address that the "soul of America" remains at risk, implicitly acknowledging that at the end of his four-year term as president, the national divisions that drove him to run for the White House remain unresolved.
The confirmation came in a farewell letter ahead of a televised address from the Oval Office on Wednesday night, his last as president before being replaced by Donald Trump next week.
"I'm running for president because I believe the soul of America is at stake. The very essence of who we are is at stake," Biden wrote in a theme likely to be repeated in his speech. "And it still is."
The admission was an indirect acknowledgment that Biden's legacy - trumpeted in a long list of claimed accomplishments at the end of the letter - is overshadowed by the impending return of Trump, who will defeat Vice President Khama on Monday La Harris took office. November.
When Biden ran for the 2020 presidential election, he made it clear that his motivation was to defeat Trump and viewed the competition with Trump as a battle for the "soul" of America.
He returned to the theme in 2022 during a speech at Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where he viewed Trump as a "threat to this country" and said he and his "Make America Great Again" followers disrespected the United States constitution.
As Trump's political comeback overshadows that message, Biden predicts -- without mentioning Trump by name -- that the values he campaigned on will endure, even if his successor espouses very different values than his predecessor .
“The idea of America is stronger than any military and larger than any ocean,” he wrote.
"This is the most powerful idea in the history of the world. The idea that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have never fully realized this A sacred idea, but we never gave up on it either. I don't believe the American people will give up on it now."
He added: "History is in your hands. Power is in your hands. The idea of America is in your hands. We just have to keep the faith and remember who we are."
As Trump vows to undo many of his legislative achievements, Biden says part of his legacy is making the country safer in the wake of "the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War" - referring to January 6, 2021 Japanese Attack on America Here's what happened at the Capitol as a pro-Trump mob sought to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.
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"Four years ago, we endured a winter of danger and opportunity. We were facing 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," the president wrote . "But we came together as Americans, and we weathered this with courage. We emerged stronger, more prosperous, and safer."
He praised his government for ending the Covid-19 pandemic through a national vaccine program and said it had successfully engineered an economic recovery that had created 16 million jobs - although ongoing concerns about inflation hurt his approval ratings and Harris lost the election.
Biden said it was "the honor of my life" to serve the country for 50 years, first as a senator, then as vice president and finally as president.
He wrote: “Nowhere else on earth could a stuttering kid from humble beginnings in Scranton, Pa., and Claremont, Del., one day sit behind the stalwart desk in the Oval Office as President of the United States. president."