As Biden Drops 2024 Presidential Reelection Bid, Explore His Legacy (2024)

President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign this past weekend was the latest dramatic and difficult moment in what has been a lifetime of them.

In multiple documentaries, FRONTLINE has chronicled Biden’s life and career over five decades in U.S. politics — the challenges, tragedies, triumphs and controversies; the tough choices made; and the approach to leadership that took shape along the way.

From Biden’s childhood battle with stuttering and then the death of his wife and young child, through his decades as a U.S. senator, his eight years as vice president in the Obama administration, and taking office as president himself in a time of cascading national crises, Biden was always one to pick himself back up after challenging moments, those who know him told FRONTLINE.

“He always took what I think is the harder road, which is, you’ve got to face things; you’ve got to get up; you’ve got to brush yourself off, and you’ve got to reach and start moving again,” Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, who managed Biden’s seven senatorial campaigns, told FRONTLINE in a 2020 interview.

This time, facing things meant stepping back. Unable to quell Democratic Party leaders’ and donors’ concerns about his health, acuity and viability as a candidate following his faltering June 27 debate performance, Biden said in a letter posted to the platform X on Sunday that he had made the decision to end his reelection campaign and would focus instead on serving out the rest of his term. In another post on X, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor and said, “It’s time to come together and beat Trump.”

The decision throws an already unprecedented campaign season into further turmoil. Following a historic felony conviction and then a string of legal victories, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt on July 13 and was confirmed as the GOP nominee for president days later at the Republican National Convention.

As Democrats appear to coalesce around Vice President Harris as their new candidate, examine the life and legacy of President Biden through the lens of FRONTLINE’s reporting over the years.

President Biden

Following Biden’s 2020 election win, this biography from FRONTLINE told the story of how crisis and tragedy prepared him to become America’s next president. From Biden’s stutter, to the death of his wife and young daughter in a car crash and, later, the loss of his son to cancer, the documentary examined the searing moments that shaped Biden, his long career in politics and the controversies he faced, and what his responses to those challenges suggested about how he would govern.

Through the FRONTLINE Transparency Project, explore 30 extended interviews from the making of the film with Biden’s colleagues, critics, friends, family members and journalists who have covered Biden over his long career.

Putin and the Presidents

Responding to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been a central foreign policy challenge of Biden’s presidency. This documentary looked in part at Biden’s long history with Putin, how their relationship evolved through the years and their faceoff over Ukraine.

Netanyahu, America and the Road to War in Gaza

Amid the catastrophic war in Gaza that has followed the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel, this documentary traced the road to the present — and looked at Biden’s relationship with Netanyahu and his handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

America and the Taliban

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war was one of the Biden presidency’s most difficult chapters, with the Taliban sweeping into power and the Western-backed government collapsing two weeks before U.S. troops were set to finish withdrawing. This 3-part documentary series examined how the war reached that point, including the Trump administration’s deal with a resurgent Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces, and, in part three, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan during Biden’s presidency and the consequences for the Afghan people.

Supreme Revenge: Battle for the Court

This documentary examined the decades-long battle for control of the Supreme Court, and explored Biden’s role as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee — including during the Clarence Thomas Senate confirmation hearings that included Anita Hill’s testimony. The film shows how Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell solidified the court’s conservative majority, which stands today.

What Joe Biden Told Us About School Shootings and Gun Control in 2014

In the 2015 documentary Gunned Down, FRONTLINE examined the NRA, its political evolution and influence, and how it had consistently succeeded in defeating new gun control legislation. The film covered President Barack Obama tasking then-Vice President Biden with leading a national gun-control effort in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting. Biden told FRONTLINE how the Sandy Hook families felt “disbelief and a sense of betrayal” when that legislation failed. FRONTLINE published this extended interview with Biden in 2022, during his presidency, in the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting and before the first significant federal gun safety legislation in several decades was signed into law.