You would never know from watching Joe Biden’s address from the Oval Office last night (24 July) how much pressure he had been under to stand aside. That it had taken the combined efforts of George Clooney, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, along with an open revolt among elected Democrats and catastrophic polls to finally convince the 81-year-old president that he could not run for a second term.
Yet even as he elided the weeks-long pressure campaign that had led to this moment, and his own stubborn, prideful efforts to resist the inevitable, Biden offered a dignified portrait of a man coming to terms with the end of his presidency, and with it his half-century long career in American politics. “I revere this office, but I love my country more,” Biden said. “It has been the honour of my life to serve as your president. But the defence of democracy, which is at stake, I think is more important than any title.”
Biden spoke haltingly, even though he was reading from a teleprompter. He stumbled over his words. He looked old and frail. It was hard to believe that just four weeks earlier – before he had stepped onto that fateful debate stage in Atlanta, Georgia, on 27 June – there had been little public concern within the Democratic party about whether he was the best candidate to run, let alone whether he was capable of serving for another four years in the most powerful office in the land.
But as Biden’s political world has collapsed in recent days, he has reinvented himself as the transitional president he once promised to be, declaring that the time has come to “pass the torch to a new generation” and, without mentioning Donald Trump’s name, laying out the stark choice that now lies ahead. “I’ve made it clear that I believe America is at an inflection point,” he said. “The decisions we make now [will] determine our fate of our nation and the world for decades to come, America is going to have to choose between moving forward or backward. Between hope and hate. Between unity and division.”
He invoked the words of Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers, who was asked in 1787 when the constitution was drafted whether the United States would be governed as a monarchy or a republic. “A republic, if you can keep it,” Franklin replied. “Whether we keep our republic is now in your hands,” Biden said. His children, grandchildren, and top advisers had packed into the oval office to listen to what sounded like a valedictory speech. “Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania… one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as the president of the United States, but here I am.”
He threw his weight behind his vice-president Kamala Harris, who is now the presumptive Democratic nominee. “She is experienced, she is tough, she is capable,” he said. “She has been an incredible partner to me and a leader for our country.”
Biden is the first serving president since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 not to seek a second term. He deserves credit for his decision to step down, albeit under pressure. Precious few leaders leave office of their own accord. This is why democracies have term limits. And why Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping look set to rule for life.
That decision goes against Biden’s philosophy. In a life that has been defined by personal tragedy – losing his first wife and baby daughter in a car crash in 1972, and then his son Beau to a brain tumour in 2015 – along with political setbacks, including two failed presidential bids, he has prided himself on his ability to pick himself up and prove his doubters wrong. He has long nursed grievances about supposedly being looked down upon by the party elites, including, reportedly, his frustration at being passed over by Barack Obama, who discouraged his vice-president from running for the Democratic nomination in 2016 and backed Hillary Clinton instead. It is admirable that he was eventually able to put his ego aside and accept that, at 81, he could no longer be the comeback kid.
This is also a striking contrast to Trump, who long after being defeated in the 2020 election, attempted to cling to power, abusing his office to try to overturn the results and rallying a mob of armed supporters who went on to storm the US capitol. There is no chance that Trump would ever deign to put his party or his country first.
Biden – and the wider Democratic party – deserves criticism, however, for taking so long to reach this decision. It should have been obvious long before the infamous debate that Biden was too old to run again. Even in 2020 many voters expressed serious concerns about his age. By leaving it so late to change course, there was no time to hold a real primary, which meant the party has no real option except Harris, and she was left with 100 days to mount a presidential bid from a standing start. This also put Harris on the hook for Republican charges of a cover-up, who are already demanding to know how much she knew about Biden’s decline and when she knew it. Trump will exploit these charges to attack her integrity on the campaign trail, arguing that, at best, she has been duplicitous.
The outgoing president is also culpable for the fact that Harris is not better positioned to run. It was his decision to saddle her with the impossible task of addressing the root causes of immigration as vice-president, a brief that she was understandably reluctant to take. His defenders argue that this was a mark of his respect for her, as he had taken on the same role for Obama, but as someone who has been involved in US politics for 50 years, he must also have known how toxic this issue was. Already it has yielded one of Trump’s strongest attack lines against Harris as he calls her Biden’s “border czar” and attempts to lay all the problems at the southern border at her feet. Biden – and his inner circle – could have done much more to prepare Harris for this moment, or at least to leave her less vulnerable to Republican attacks.
Biden is now effectively a lame duck president. He will be feted within the party for his selfless act of sacrifice, and no doubt hailed as a hero at the Democratic national convention in Chicago next month. But already he has begun to fade towards irrelevance. He will never again give a speech that will draw as much attention. Kamala Harris is now the party’s future and the great hope to defeat Donald Trump. Biden represents the past.
His legacy will depend on what happens in November. If Harris wins, he will be seen as a great statesman and a far-sighted leader, who put his party and his country ahead of his own political ambitions and propelled the first black woman to the presidency. It might even be seen as a good thing that she was launched into the race with so little time to prepare that her opponents were left scrambling, and she was able to ride the wave of excitement it generated all the way to the White House. But if she falls short, Biden will be remembered as a man who did not know when to quit, and whose stubbornness, ego, and personal pride paved the way for Donald Trump to return to power.
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