The Last Politician

How can you govern a polarized superpower, end a forever war, outmaneuver a pandemic, and confront revisionist states at once? In The Last Politician, Franklin Foer argues that Joe Biden’s first years hinge on a simple, unfashionable claim: politics—its rituals, negotiations, and institutions—can still deliver. Foer contends that redemption for democratic governance requires the fusion of craft and competence: the old-school arts of persuasion paired with an operational obsession that turns promises into systems.

In this guide, you’ll discover how Biden leans into process and relationships to pass relief and infrastructure, how managers like Jeff Zients remake vaccination into a logistical triumph, and how a single senator (Joe Manchin) can rewire national ambitions. You’ll then learn how foreign policy becomes a performance of candor and coordination—declassifying intelligence to expose Russia’s plans, rebuilding alliance muscle memory, and pacing support to Ukraine through the ‘three clocks’ of stamina. Finally, you’ll see how moral stakes and managerial limits collide in Afghanistan, how economic statecraft (CHIPS, antitrust, labor) reorients domestic power for global competition, and how symbolic promises (Ketanji Brown Jackson) are executed through hard arithmetic in a 50-50 Senate.

Politics as a craft and a moral project

Foer’s Biden delights in the tools of politics—stories told beneath portraits of Hamilton and FDR, Oval Office flattery, and long calls to skeptics. But his craft is tethered to a moral thesis: prove that democracy works. That’s why he pleads at his inauguration that “disagreement must not lead to disunion” and treats rivals as potential partners, not permanent enemies (a sharp contrast, Foer notes, to Trump’s performative disdain for process).

Competence as power

The administration’s vaccine sprint reframes what it means to govern: it isn’t just announcing goals; it’s building dashboards, unblocking filters for Pfizer with the Defense Production Act, and guaranteeing weekly shipments to end hoarding. Zients, Tim Manning, Andy Slavitt, and David Kessler embody Foer’s thesis that managerial habits can be as politically consequential as ideology. When Omicron exposes a testing gap, you witness the other edge—prioritization choices carry real political costs.

Legislating in the narrowest majority

With a 50-50 Senate, policy becomes personality. Biden sequences a two-act play—relief (American Rescue Plan) followed by recovery (Build Back Better)—and mixes public bipartisanship on infrastructure with private reconciliation plans. Joe Manchin’s memo, Chuck Schumer’s handshake, Nancy Pelosi’s whip tactics, and Pramila Jayapal’s progressive leverage show you how one pivotal vote can collapse or resurrect a presidency’s agenda (culminating in the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate-tax-credit engine).

Foreign policy, updated

“Managed competition” defines Biden’s approach: bluntness at Anchorage with China, guarded candor with Putin in Geneva, and meticulous alliance repair. Intelligence is not a secret hoard but a public instrument—declassifying Russian plans to preempt pretexts; dispatching Bill Burns to Moscow to test intent. When war comes, the U.S. moves materiel, trains Ukrainians, and calibrates escalation with allies while sanctioning Russia and warning China off lethal aid.

Trade-offs and images

Foer insists you separate strategy from execution. Afghanistan, the sharpest example, shows a coherent decision (end an unwinnable war) marred by images of collapse—C‑17s lifting off, Abbey Gate’s blast—proof that optics can swamp intent. Throughout, the book argues that success depends on aligning craft, competence, and narrative in real time, a feat as much about people (Zelensky, Manchin, Collins) as about policy designs.

Key Idea

Politics, done seriously, is not a vibe; it is a discipline—relationships, rules, and relentless execution—aimed at proving that democratic government can still solve hard problems.

(Note: Readers of Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power will hear an echo—presidential influence flows from bargaining and reputation. Foer updates that playbook for an era of social media, pandemics, and near-parity legislatures.)

Foer casts Biden as a practitioner of politics in the artisanal sense—he believes the tools matter and he uses them constantly. You see it from day one, when he stages the Oval Office with Hamilton and FDR to spark negotiation parables that personalize history. Politics, in this telling, is human: counting votes, flattering egos, building trust, and timing the ask. Biden’s mantra is not confrontation but conversion—bring skeptics into the room, keep channels open with adversaries, and let patient persuasion do the work.

Rituals, relationships, results

Biden delights in rituals because rituals are levers. The inauguration—amid fencing and pandemic flags—becomes a performative renewal of institutions. Inside, he choreographs meetings with senators to soften positions. The American Rescue Plan passes not because the policy is perfect but because the outreach is relentless: courting Joe Manchin with respect (and the occasional hard edge), staging moments for Susan Collins, and empowering Ron Klain to quarterback the Senate chessboard.

Tools of the trade

Foer dwells on tactics you can use anywhere: storytelling to anchor values, empathy to reduce threat perception, and flattery to unlock reciprocity. Biden takes calls even from rivals (e.g., Putin) to reduce miscalculation and preserve space for dealmaking. He calibrates promises—like committing to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court—and then executes through process: vetting Ketanji Brown Jackson, mapping Senate support, and quietly probing moderate Republicans (Collins, Murkowski, Romney) as hedges against Manchin and Sinema’s volatility.

The patience to absorb pain

Governing as a craft demands absorbing short-term criticism for longer-term positioning. Biden accepts blowback on Afghanistan to end an unwinnable commitment. He tolerates progressive ire when bipartisanship on infrastructure coexists with a reconciliation path for social policy. He lives with the messiness of Pelosi’s whip fights and Pramila Jayapal’s linkage tactics because he values final passage over perfect optics.

Limits and trade-offs

Foer is not sentimental. Treating politics as a craft can look naïve against radical opponents or media accelerants. Empathy can shade into incrementalism when structural change demands confrontation. The craft ethos also depends on accurate reads of character; miscalculations—like a press release that enrages Manchin—can fracture hard-won trust. Still, the practice pays off: ARP’s Child Tax Credit cuts child poverty; the infrastructure deal breaks Washington’s decade-long stalemate; KBJ’s confirmation fulfills a moral and representational promise.

Key Idea

In close contests, process is policy—your ability to set the room, read people, and time decisions often determines substance more than white papers do.

(Note: Compare to Robert Caro’s portrait of Lyndon Johnson—the levers change, but mastery of committee rooms and personal loyalties remains the engine of lawmaking.)

Foer uses the vaccine drive to show how managerial competence translates into lives saved and political legitimacy earned. Jeff Zients, not a scientist but a systems fixer, turns chaos into choreography: daily dashboards, clear ownership, and low-ego teams (Natalie Quillian, Andy Slavitt, David Kessler). The result is an operational turnaround that takes vaccines from warehouses into arms at scale—proof that execution is a political act.

From promise to pipeline

The Biden team discovers orphaned plans and bottlenecks—syringe shortages, cold-chain gaps, and hoarding. Tim Manning invokes the Defense Production Act for small but critical parts (filters, clean-room modules for Pfizer). David Kessler leans on manufacturers; Slavitt confronts a shocking statistic: only 46% of delivered doses get administered. The fix is practical: guarantee weekly shipments to states, build confidence to schedule clinics, and expand access points to pharmacies and community sites.

Negotiating supply and trust

Zients secures extra Moderna doses after tough talks with CEO Stéphane Bancel, turning a procurement victory into public momentum. The administration pairs logistics with messaging—routine briefings, clear targets—to rebuild trust in competence after a chaotic transition. The mantra is simple: “It’s all about the execution.” And for a season, execution carries the day.

The Omicron reckoning

Omicron flips the script. The U.S. prioritized vaccines over rapid home testing; when a fast-moving variant arrives amid holidays, shelves empty and lines snake around clinics. Press secretary Jen Psaki’s flippant remark about mailing tests to every American becomes emblematic of a blind spot—days later, the White House pivots and does precisely that. Kessler’s early warning system (tracking South African data) worked, but supply could not be conjured overnight; the administration must now admit the gap and backfill capacity.

Lessons you can use

Foer’s lesson is operational humility: plan for redundancy—vaccines, tests, and therapeutics—and communicate constraints early. In crisis, execution buys political time; misaligned expectations spend it down. The White House’s willingness to course-correct (free tests) and Biden’s later admission that more orders should have come earlier underline a core truth: competence is iterative, not static.

Key Idea

Vaccines win the war; tests win the days—neglect the quotidian tools people need to navigate life and you invite preventable political backlash.

(Note: The contrast to Operation Warp Speed’s scientific sprint is instructive—Foer shows how scientific breakthroughs require bureaucratic muscle and logistics arts to matter at street level.)

Foer’s legislative chapters read like a procedural thriller where arithmetic drives substance. Biden sequences a two-act strategy: pass immediate relief (American Rescue Plan) to stabilize the country, then attempt a more transformative recovery (Build Back Better) across climate, care, and infrastructure. He courts Republicans for a bipartisan infrastructure win while preparing reconciliation as a fallback for social policy—an exercise in dual-track bargaining shaped by the filibuster’s constraints.

The Manchin memo and Senate reality

In July, Joe Manchin writes a $1.5 trillion memo, signs it, and texts it to Chuck Schumer; Schumer countersigns with a promise to “try to dissuade Joe.” Nancy Pelosi, who had driven committees toward a $3.5 trillion framework, learns of the private compact at a ballpark—and fumes. With a single document, Manchin collapses House ambitions into Senate reality. The episode crystallizes Foer’s core claim: in a 50–50 Senate, the pivotal centrist becomes effective majority.

Pelosi’s whip and progressive leverage

October’s showdown puts Pelosi’s mastery on display. She wants Biden to issue a clean “Big Ask” for the infrastructure vote; he signals “Both,” leaving space for Pramila Jayapal’s Progressive Caucus to link the bills and withhold votes. Members secede to a private meeting during a procedural vote, sparking furious leadership voicemails. Pelosi deploys carrots and sticks—travel delegation slots, CBC imprimatur—and salvages a path that eventually yields the bipartisan infrastructure law and keeps reconciliation alive.

From collapse to the Inflation Reduction Act

December brings a blowup: a White House statement naming Manchin triggers his ire; trust craters. Months later, Schumer and Manchin retreat to a Capitol basement to rewrite the script, birthing the “Inflation Reduction Act”—substantial clean-energy tax credits, drug pricing reforms, and fiscal offsets palatable to Manchin. It’s less than the New Deal–scale aspiration, but it materially reshapes energy markets by catalyzing private investment.

Court arithmetic and symbolism

The Supreme Court vacancy shows the same calculus. Biden nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson—honoring a promise to Jim Clyburn—while courting moderate Republicans (Collins, Murkowski, Romney) as insurance against Manchin and Sinema’s unpredictability. The result melds merit, representation, and whip work into a defining symbolic and institutional win.

Key Idea

Sequence, secrecy, and stamina—big laws pass when leaders time the votes, guard fragile bargains, and endure the theatrics long enough to strike a deal.

(Note: Where the Affordable Care Act leaned on party unity, Foer’s story features coalition bricolage—late-night basements, houseboat diplomacy, and a constant search for the 50th vote.)

Foer traces a quiet revolution in Democratic economic thinking—away from reflexive market deference toward purposeful statecraft. Biden’s team (Brian Deese, Bruce Reed, Jake Sullivan) stitches industrial policy, competition policy, and labor revival into a coherent project for resilience at home and leverage abroad. The message is clear: to compete with China and stabilize democracy, rebuild strategic capacity and curb concentration.

Picking arenas, not winners

The CHIPS Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law, and the climate spine of the Inflation Reduction Act concentrate investment in semiconductors, ports, EV charging, and grid modernization. It’s less Soviet-style planning than choosing arenas the market underprovides because of scale, externalities, or geopolitics. Foer frames this shift as pragmatic: don’t bet on a specific firm; build the ecosystem that makes multiple firms viable in America.

Antitrust with modern teeth

Personnel is policy. By elevating Lina Khan to the FTC and Tim Wu to the NEC, the White House normalizes a revived antimonopoly agenda against tech and conglomerate power. An executive order on competition pushes agencies to consider consumer lock-ins and labor monopsony, while targeted wins (over-the-counter hearing aids, junk fee crackdowns) translate theory into household benefits. Biden’s language—“Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation”—links policy to a populist moral frame.

Labor as a pillar, not an afterthought

Foer highlights labor’s renewed seat at the table. Richard Trumka nudges Biden into openly endorsing union drives (e.g., the Bessemer video), and the administration backs the PRO Act even as Senate math blocks it. The emerging pattern ties industrial investment to job quality and organizing—an attempt to make supply chains more domestic and middle class by design, not accident.

Domestic strength as foreign policy

Economic statecraft is the home front of “managed competition.” If you aim to shape global technology standards and deter coercion, you need fabs in Ohio, not just talking points in Brussels. Foer threads this through the Ukraine response: sanctions work better when allies coordinate, and allies coordinate when the U.S. looks competent and self-invested.

Key Idea

Build capacity, police concentration, empower workers—economic policy becomes a security strategy when it makes your society harder to coerce and quicker to adapt.

(Note: The synthesis recalls the New Deal’s blend of public works and antitrust, updated for semiconductors and platforms rather than steel and railroads.)

Foer’s account of Afghanistan is the book’s harshest test of Biden’s method. The strategic rationale is clear: the war is unwinnable, costs are compounding, and nation-building logic has collapsed. Biden presses military leaders—Mark Milley, Lloyd Austin—with four pointed questions on terrorism risk, Afghan state viability, Taliban behavior, and great-power reactions, trying to prevent an open-ended glide back into occupation.

Coherent intent, brittle reality

Plans sit atop fragile facts: contractors have gutted Afghan aircraft readiness; morale in provincial forces is misread; command chains are unreliable. As cities fall faster than intelligence estimates, President Ghani flees, and the state implodes. The airport becomes the last node of order—embassy staff decamp to Hamid Karzai International, John Bass returns to triage evacuation, and allies (Qatar) hustle ‘lily-pad’ transit hubs into place.

Evacuation scale vs. image shock

Operationally, the U.S. evacuates masses under fire; morally and politically, the images sear: bodies on tarmac, Afghans clinging to a C‑17, and the suicide bombing at Abbey Gate that kills thirteen U.S. service members. Foer’s granular stories—the White Scarves effort, a Kill List of at-risk Afghan women, visa paperwork stacked against time—refuse abstraction. They force you to see policy as lived stakes.

Lessons in execution and accountability

Foer urges a split-screen judgment. The decision to end the war fits Biden’s doctrine of limits; the execution failed to protect allies and control the exit’s tempo. Responsibility is distributed: White House planners, Pentagon logisticians, State Department processes, contractors, and partners each owned a slice of risk. The episode cautions against conflating clear policy with clean outcomes in collapsing environments.

Key Idea

An extraction can be a tactical success and a strategic defeat—if the images and human losses overwhelm the narrative of necessity.

(Note: Students of civil-military relations will recognize the echo of Iraq’s drawdown debates; Foer’s contribution is to center logistics, imagery, and ally protection as equal pillars of strategy.)

Foer describes Biden’s foreign policy as a return to disciplined alliances, updated for an era of techno-authoritarian rivals. The posture toward China and Russia abandons magical thinking about integration’s liberalizing effects and adopts “managed competition”—compete hard on technology, trade, and human rights, but keep channels open to reduce miscalculation and marshal coalitions.

Anchorage and the new tone with China

At Anchorage, Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken confront Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi with unusual bluntness—no illusions about automatic convergence via commerce. The exchange is theatrical by design, a message to allies and domestic audiences that values and interests can be stated plainly. Channels remain open, but the premise shifts: you hedge against coercion by rebuilding domestic capacity (CHIPS) and coordinating with G7 and EU partners on standards and supply chains.

Geneva with Putin: candor without spectacle

In Geneva, Biden meets Putin with clarity on ransomware, human rights, and red lines, stripped of gratuitous theatrics. He favors ‘performative purpose’—use ritual to set tone, then speak directly. Foer highlights Biden’s storytelling habit (“graveyard of empires”) as a diplomatic tool—folklore sharpening deterrent messages without gratuitous provocation.

Rebuilding trust, managing friction

Repairing transatlantic trust is laborious: coordinating on Nord Stream 2, sanction design, and later, crisis responses (Israel–Gaza). With Ukraine, Biden appreciates allied constraints and Zelensky’s political style, which he sometimes finds trying. Yet the throughline holds: alliances give power coherence—sanctions bite harder, weapons move faster, and diplomacy carries weight when partners believe in your steadiness.

Key Idea

Rituals, rapport, and realism—Biden’s diplomacy uses ceremony to restore trust, directness to set boundaries, and alliances to convert statements into leverage.

(Note: The approach recalls George H. W. Bush’s coalition-building pragmatism, adapted to a world where semiconductors and platforms are as strategic as oil.)

The Ukraine chapters show a government integrating intelligence, diplomacy, and logistics into a single campaign. It begins with a map: General Mark Milley overlays red arrows, field hospitals, and intercepted plans to argue Russia intends a full-scale assault on Kyiv, timed to seasonal conditions and symbolic dates. The insight is meta: intelligence becomes narrative; narrative becomes policy.

Declassification as deterrence

Rather than hoard secrets, the administration deploys them. Avril Haines’s team prepares unclassified products exposing likely Russian pretexts; Sullivan carries them to allies (G20 in Rome) to align sanctions and blunt propaganda. Bill Burns flies to Moscow to confront Patrushev and Putin; he returns convinced that deterrence may fail, which refocuses planning on resilience and rapid aid.

Arming for asymmetric advantage

When war comes, logistics become strategy. The U.S. stages weapons in Greece, routes through Poland, and trains Ukrainians in Germany. Javelins and Stingers blunt armor and air; HIMARS with precision rockets (GMLRS) target Russian depots and bridges, enabling the liberation of Kherson. Wiesbaden war games, with Ukrainians in the room, help pivot the main effort—surprising Russia in Kharkiv by exploiting overextended, poorly led formations.

The three clocks

Biden frames the campaign around three clocks you can track: allied solidarity, U.S. domestic patience, and Ukrainian stamina. Aid flows and rhetorical pacing manage these clocks—enough to sustain momentum, cautious enough to limit escalation with a nuclear-armed adversary. In parallel, Sullivan warns China that arming Russia would “cause the bottom to fall out” of U.S.–China relations; Beijing’s restraint keeps a second front from opening.

Sanctions and narrative warfare

SWIFT exclusions, export controls, and energy measures raise costs for Moscow while information releases keep publics aligned. The lesson mirrors the vaccine story: execution matters—moving ammo crates, scheduling training, syncing announcements with coalition moves. Strategic patience plus operational tempo generates leverage for Kyiv on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.

Key Idea

Convert data into story, story into coalition, coalition into power—Ukraine’s counteroffensive shows how integrated statecraft turns maps into momentum.

(Note: Students of Eliot Cohen’s “supreme command” will recognize the civil–military dialogue here—civilians shaping strategy by deciding what risks to run and what tools to combine.)