U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about his decision to not seek reelection, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on July 24.EVAN VUCCI/Getty Images
Liberated and with an eye to his legacy, the old warrior seemed to breathe a sigh of relief on American national television.
The relief was experienced in several other dimensions as well – some of it from his Democratic Party colleagues, some from the party barons who had to usher him away from the campaign stage, some from his closest admirers who stood by him as the demands for withdrawal accumulated and as the signs of decline mounted, becoming unavoidable even by those who wanted to avoid them as long as possible.
In saying that he was leaving office to save the country, Joe Biden created a poignant, historic moment, perhaps the most affecting of all the Joe Biden moments over all the years that he was at the centre of American life, a moment long in coming but not drained of its drama for the waiting. For weeks, the country knew a statement like Wednesday night’s explanation of his parting from elective politics was likely – everyone realized it, except for a clutch of loyalists and maybe the President himself.
“I revere this office,” the President said, “but I love my country more.”
Unspoken but screaming from a speech in which the President whispered: The studied contrast between Mr. Biden, who relinquished power voluntarily, and Donald Trump, who sought to retain power after being defeated four years ago.
Age and its ravages had overtaken the ancient combatant, once strong, once nimble, once quick of tongue and brisk of gait. For anyone who knew the old Joe Biden (meaning the Joe Biden of his 30s and 40s and a bit beyond), the sight of this old Joe Biden (a more literal description, of recent years) was bracing, sobering, even saddening. The face was drawn, the speech a little halting, befitting his history of stuttering.
He had run the course and (again employing the same phrase in an entirely different manner) his time in the capital that he had made his forum for nearly a half-century had also run its course.
Across those yawning decades, he attracted the best of the American political class: first there were mentors, then protégés, finally and fatefully, protectors. He once was a figure of destiny – a whole class of Washington thinkers, plotters and schemers thought he had the personality and profile for the presidency as early as 1987 – and then, in disappointment and disgrace, he was left for years by the side of the road.
He found an infinitesimal shard of solace in important Capitol Hill chairmanships (Senate finance committee, Senate foreign relations committee). But he never relinquished the dream of more, his goal not merely to negotiate with lawmakers over legislative language but instead to reign in the White House, signing bills that had come over from the Hill.
That came to him in late age, and then it was clear that because of age, it was his too late.
So now, in the diminished role of lame duck, he is reaching for his legacy.
The first building block is his record, which he touted in his Oval Office speech and which now is for Vice-President Kamala Harris both her benefit and her burden. (In speaking of “passing the torch,” he repeated the phrase his model John F. Kennedy used in the seventh sentence of the 35th president’s 1961 Inaugural Address – a speech Mr. Biden also quoted in the 1987 launch of his first presidential campaign.)
The second is the manner of his departure, wiping clean what his party detractors claimed was selfishness (as he fought to remain in the arena, engaging in ignoble strife far from the madding crowd while in COVID exile) and, finally, revealing a shining selflessness (reflecting how he relinquished that which he prized the most).
Mr. Biden is free of the complexity of many of his presidential predecessors, whether they be Democrats Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson or Republicans Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. So it was entirely in context – it was purely distilled Joe Biden – that in his remarks, not quite a valedictory but, just the same, a farewell to the arms of electoral politics, the President spoke of simple things.
But these simple things have become important things in the context of these times: a choice between “hope and hate,” and between “unity and division.”
Perhaps not since Bill Clinton – and maybe George H.W. Bush and then all the way back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt – was there a president who so utterly enjoyed the employment of power. “I find joy,” Mr. Biden said in his remarks, “in working for the American people.”
The speech came hours after the appearance of a new CNN poll that showed Ms. Harris performing marginally better than Mr. Biden against Mr. Trump, though the figures were still within the margin of error and still showed Mr. Trump slightly ahead, with 49 per cent vs. 46 per cent for Ms. Harris.
Mr. Biden didn’t exactly say goodbye; that is for another time, a speech for winter, not for midsummer. Maybe, with that signature Biden smile, the President was summoning a remark sometimes attributed (possibly erroneously) to Theodor Geisel, known to generations as Dr. Seuss: “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”