After bowing out of the 2024 race, Biden embarks on a new project: Shaping his legacy

WASHINGTON — For more than three at-times excruciating weeks, President Joe Biden and his team were locked in a campaign to save his candidacy. With his prime-time address to the nation Wednesday night, a new effort is underway: to shape his legacy.

A team of Biden’s closest advisers is already at work to plot out what that will look like. The discussion includes domestic priorities he could advance in coming budget negotiations with Congress or through executive action, diplomatic initiatives he could see through with a freer hand and accomplishing what he has described as the most elusive of the three goals he outlined in his 2020 campaign — unifying the country.

NBC News spoke to a half-dozen White House and campaign officials about what Biden is planning, and advisers said they recognize that the biggest factor shaping how he is viewed in history will be whether Vice President Kamala Harris is successful in her bid to succeed him.

“Everything is being viewed through that lens,” a White House official said.

In the earliest stages of this new phase, Harris campaign and Biden administration officials describe a thus far seamless approach to advancing both of their goals at once. There has been no explicit directive to Biden aides to run major decisions by Harris’ team for approval — but they have been collaborating nonetheless to make sure to row in the same direction.

Some of that is by necessity more than design — Harris’ team on the campaign and in the White House had been a much smaller part of the larger operation. But it also reflects the experience of personnel on both sides — especially long-standing relationships between Sheila Nix, who was overseeing Harris’ campaign team, and top Biden advisers she once