Cement.

I'm slogging through the NYT material about these last days of the Biden presidency. The word "cement" keeps appearing:

1. "Biden Races to Cement His Legacy Through a Series of Actions" — "In the final days of his term, President Biden has issued a series of policy decisions intended to cement his agenda and, in some cases, make it harder for President-elect Donald J. Trump to put in place his own. The 11th-hour decisions, many of them executive actions, include measures on environmental justice, prison reform, immigration and foreign relations. Some are intended to preserve Mr. Biden’s legacy, while others are last-ditch efforts to expand his approach. Many are likely to be undone after Mr. Trump takes office next week. The actions have gotten the attention of Mr. Trump, who said on social media earlier this month that Mr. Biden was 'doing everything possible' to make the transition process 'as difficult as possible.' 'Fear not, these "orders" will be terminated shortly,' Mr. Trump added."

2. "Biden to Deliver Farewell Address, Capping a 5-Decade Political Career/The president has sought to portray his administration as transformative, but his speech on Wednesday night comes amid a backdrop in which he is not leaving on his own terms" — "The White House would not disclose what Mr. Biden plans to say in his speech, set for 8 p.m. Eastern. But in his final months he has been seeking to cement a legacy as a transformative president that stabilized domestic politics while bolstering America’s leadership abroad, one who ushered the nation out of a pandemic, made historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy, and worked to strengthen democratic institutions both nationally and globally."

If you were really transformative, you would have a legacy because the people saw what you did and lived through your era and were genuinely changed. You wouldn't need to cement anything. You wouldn't need to set up obstacles to try to slow down your successor.

Now, here's an appearance of cement in something from last week about Jimmy Carter: "A Legacy From Carter That Democrats Would Prefer to Escape/For decades, Republicans have reveled in invoking Jimmy Carter’s name to deride Democrats as weak — mockery that has influenced the way Democrats present themselves to voters":

“[Carter] became an exemplar of why you had to look tough and not weak in foreign policy'.... Indeed, more than 30 years after Mr. Carter left office, Republicans reached back to the Carter years to dismiss a momentous decision by President Barack Obama that delivered a forceful rebuttal to the idea of Democrats as weak or ineffective: approving the American raid to assassinate Osama bin Laden in 2011.

“Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,” said Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president....

This aspect of Mr. Carter’s legacy was ultimately set in cement by his defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan, a former actor and governor who presented himself as a decisive and forceful contrast to the sitting president. “He was the standard by which Democrats and Republicans judged political effectiveness,” Tim Naftali, a presidential historian, said of Mr. Reagan. “So by definition, Carter, whom Reagan had beaten, was the opposite of effective, the model to be avoided.”

Set in cement. Cement, the noun, not cement, the verb. It's where a bad legacy is stuck. It's far too late for Biden to take the active role and cement anything positive. He can make his peevish "11th-hour decisions" and "last-ditch efforts" but like Carter, he will be remembered as "the opposite of effective, the model to be avoided."

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