With his presidency nearly over, Joe Biden is considering preemptive pardons for people Donald Trump has criticized or threatened.

But hobbled by inflation, illegal immigration and his own advancing age, Mr. Biden leaves office as an unpopular one-term president, turning over the Oval Office to a man he considers a fascist and a danger to democracy. He hopes that history will remember him more fondly than his contemporaries do and, as with other presidents, it just well might.