The curtain is closing on Joe Biden's one-term presidency.
Soon, the man he succeeded will succeed him in the Oval Office.
The striking of a Middle East ceasefire deal in the final days of Biden's tenure has been a significant boost.
During the past four years there have been some other notable successes, along with a series of blunders, miscalculations and just plain bad luck.
It's a girl! Or is it?
It was October 2023, and Australia's prime minister was being treated to all the pomp and ceremony of a US state visit.
I was standing in a spectator pen as Anthony Albanese and his host Joe Biden performed one of the set pieces, a review of the troops.
Watching the leader of the free world navigate the White House South Lawn felt agonising.
He looked fragile, his gait a little shuffling.
I felt myself holding my breath, feeling he might at any point topple over.
Biden had taken a tumble earlier that year at an official event in Colorado. In 2022, he'd fallen off his bicycle. And there had been a couple of wobbles on the steps of Air Force One.
There was also the frequent mangling of his words, combined with the odd senior's moment, including the time he appeared to call out for a congresswoman who had recently died.
The president's supporters brushed away suggestions he was simply too old.
Biden after all had overcome a childhood stutter, whose effects still lingered, and had always been wont to get a little tangled up when speaking.
His gait, they argued, hadn't been quite right since he slipped and broke his foot in late 2020 while playing with his dog.
Some of Biden's idiosyncrasies were back on full display last week in Los Angeles.
As fires ravaged the city, the president made a visit to a fire station in Santa Monica.
The official program in California had been called off, but the first couple had managed to visit the hospital where their granddaughter had just given birth.
"The good news," Biden told those assembled at the fire station, "is I'm a great-grandfather as of today.
"A 10-pound, 4-ounce baby girl — baby boy."
(A social media post from the first lady's account later clarified the newborn was indeed a boy.)
The moment was classic Biden.
There was the bad luck of his plans being derailed and overshadowed by bigger events.
There was the mixing of his personal and public life (more on that later).
And then there was the verbal stumble, leaving reporters scrambling to check what the president had said, and more to the point, what he had meant.
"I'm going to remember this day for a lot of the wrong reasons," Biden went on to say. "But anyway..."
The debate to end all
The first phase of Biden's 2024 candidacy proceeded with a sort of collective breath-holding within the Democratic party.
His State of the Union address in March had gone better than anticipated.
Donald Trump was mired in legal problems, and Biden had already beaten him once.
Perhaps he really could do it again?
Then came the debate in late June.
Things didn't look good from the word go as the octogenarian ambled onto the stage.
Minutes later, it was essentially all over.
Still, Biden persisted.
His supporters said he'd just had a bad night.
In the aftermath, Biden acknowledged he no longer did some things as well as he used to. But he insisted he was still the person best placed to beat Trump.
The assassin's bullet
It may have been a moment outside of Biden's control that ultimately sealed his political fate.
On July 13, just over two weeks after the disastrous debate, a would-be assassin's bullet grazed Trump's ear at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Surrounded by Secret Service agents who'd piled on him as he dropped to the ground, a bloodied Trump rose up against the backdrop of the Stars and Stripes, pumping his fist in the air and mouthing "fight, fight, fight."
As Trump received a hero's welcome at the Republican convention two days later, Biden came down with COVID and had to pull out of campaign events.
Several days later, hunkered down in isolation in Delaware and under mounting pressure from senior party figures, he pulled out of the race.
In the wars
Prime Minister Albanese's visit to Washington came in the same month as Hamas attacked Israel, murdering 1,200 people, taking around 250 hostages, and triggering Israel's massive military assault on Gaza, in which tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed.
Dancing at the state dinner was scrapped, and pop band The B-52s were cut as the entertainment to reflect the gravity of the moment.
Biden's big-picture plans were also thrown into disarray.
Hamas's deadly raids came as it seemed a deal was close on Saudi Arabia normalising relations with Israel in return for greater defence ties with the US.
Hopes that the Biden administration would help usher in a period of greater stability in the Middle East evaporated overnight.
This week's announcement of a ceasefire deal is a potential major breakthrough, but the administration's staunch support of Israel disenfranchised some key Democratic constituencies in the run-up to November's election.
In the early days of his presidency, Biden repeatedly told allies: "America is back."
He backed up that pledge with action.
On Ukraine, he has been steadfast.
The president has rallied Congress to funnel military aid to Kyiv and has helped reinvigorate the NATO alliance.
But three years after the Russian invasion, patience in some Republican circles is wearing thin.
Trump appears to be backing away from his bold boast he can end the conflict in a day, but it's possible nonetheless that it's under his leadership that it will reach a conclusion.
The end of another war proved to be a pivotal point in Biden's presidency, and not in a good way.
The withdrawal of the remaining US forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, 20 years after the September 11 attacks, was messy and deadly.
A suicide bombing at Kabul airport killed more than 180 people, including 13 US service members.In harrowing scenes, desperate Afghans, fearful of being abandoned to the Taliban, were seen clinging to the underside of a US military plane as it took off.
In June of that year, Biden's popularity rating was 56 per cent.
By September it had plummeted to 43 per cent.
It's currently sitting at 39 per cent.
Reflecting this week on the Afghanistan withdrawal, Biden said nevertheless that ending the war was the right call.
"And I believe history will reflect that."
It's the economy...
Biden did have major policy wins in the first half of his presidency.
He shepherded the country through the end of the pandemic, overseeing the distribution of vaccines and then getting to work on his ambitious "Build Back Better" plans.
Despite narrow congressional majorities, he managed to get investment and infrastructure bills worth several trillion dollars passed.
The measures, including the Inflation Reduction Act, saw new spending in healthcare, broadband, clean energy and roads and bridges. They also capped the cost of some prescription drugs.
The CHIPS Act was also passed, to boost American production of semiconductors and decrease reliance on Chinese supply chains.
Then there was the signing of the AUKUS defence pact with Australia and the UK, aimed at shoring up western capabilities against Chinese aggression.
The trouble, in terms of his domestic support, was that many of the potential economic benefits could take years to eventuate.
As Americans navigated the post-pandemic period, rising grocery and fuel prices were a more pressing concern.
At times, Biden came across as tone deaf.
For a long time, he continued to talk up his economic program, dubbed Bidenomics.
When inflation finally fell from its highest level in decades, he didn't seem to acknowledge that the macro-economic situation was not being felt in homes around the country.
Prices may not have been rising so fast, but they weren't coming down to pre-pandemic levels either.
The man who prides himself on being the great empathiser seemed suddenly out of touch.
A get out of jail free card
In part because of their support of abortion rights after Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022, Democrats were not hit by the "red wave" that had been predicted in the midterm elections later that year.
Some of Trump's hand-picked candidates had lost competitive races in the midterms, and the former president appeared spent.
The results were a boost to Biden, who said he'd consider whether to run again over the holiday period.
When there are big decisions to be made, the president is known to consult a very small circle of people, including his wife Jill and sister Valerie.
His surviving son Hunter has also often been by his side at these moments.
A recovering drug addict, Hunter was last year facing a possible lengthy stint in jail for gun possession and tax evasion.
Then, at the last minute, dad stepped in, announcing a pardon for Hunter, whom he said had been too harshly treated because he was a Biden.
The pardon also shields Hunter from any possible further charges related to his time on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
The Bidens feared Republicans, who have so far not produced any evidence of law-breaking, would continue to pursue possible prosecutions.
Yet, the president had repeatedly insisted he would not pardon his son.
Biden's word, it seemed, wasn't as rock solid as he likes to claim.
Back to the future
Three Democrats have taken on Trump in the past three presidential elections.
Only one of them has beaten him.
As America's 46th president prepares to leave the White House, Biden says he still believes he could have beaten Trump again.
"It's presumptuous to say that, but I think yes," he told USA Today.
Biden's stint as an elected official is also remarkable — spending 35 years as a US senator, eight as vice-president and four as president.
In 2022, I compared him to Forrest Gump.
It was striking how many historic events he'd been present at.
There is also one more thing he leaves behind.
By the time the president abandoned his second-term ambitions, it was too late for the Democratic party to have a democratic process to choose his successor.
Whatever history ultimately makes of Biden's four years, his actions have paved the way for what could be one hell of a Democratic primary in 2028.
That's at least something for the party faithful to hold onto as Trump begins his truly historic second term.
