One bleak visual at the inauguration summed up Joe Biden’s presidency:

Biden sat silently – seething inwardly, no doubt – through Trump’s graceless, divisive and mean-spirited speech.

For four years, Biden sat almost mute in the White House while Trump trashed everything Biden did to build back America after Trump’s first term.

Biden thought the media would report and the public would see that he was rebuilding infrastructure, reviving manufacturing, reducing drug prices and rescuing freedom and human rights at home and abroad.

But the public didn’t see, because he never wielded the Presidency’s greatest weapon: its power to dominate the public debate.

If you don’t dominate the debate, it will dominate you.

We now learn that Biden’s family and closest advisers cosseted him and kept him out of public view so we wouldn’t see the toll age had taken.

The New York Times reported that “they recognized his physical frailty to a greater degree than they have publicly acknowledged. Then they cooperated…to manage his decline.”

Protecting him may be understandable, but opening the White House door to Trump was recklessly irresponsible.

We didn’t know the truth until Biden walked onto that debate stage in June. Suddenly and shockingly, we saw a man not up to four more years as President.

Now, as Trump returns in triumph to Washington, Biden leaves with his polls in the tank and his reputation in tatters.

It is a sad and tragic legacy.

Politico photo.