Biden Deserves Plenty of Praise, but Not Misplaced or Excessive Praise
Does it matter that President Joe Biden is being lionized for doing what was in fact the least he should have been expected to do -- something that was notably and unambiguously good for him, both now and for his place in history? I think it does matter, but it is in any event worth taking a few moments to review where things stand in the aftermath of Biden's long-overdue decision not to seek this year's presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.
I hope that readers can forgive the negativity here, especially given how much fun the Democrats have clearly been having at their convention this week in Chicago. Even I, the quintessential pessimist when it comes to US politics, have admitted to feeling a tiny bit of optimism in the post-Biden environment. And with Democrats feeling emboldened, it is perhaps understandable that they would take an expansively generous attitude toward their retiring leader, with even borderline hagiography being all but a given.
Biden was given a prime speaking slot on Tuesday evening, which became non-prime-time in the East (simply because things ran long that night), and although I watched only a few clips, it looked like a strong-for-Biden speech. I qualify that praise not to be unkind but because speeches were never Biden's strong suit, and they are still at best pleasant surprises when they go reasonably well. The convention crowd was holding up pre-printed "Thank you, Joe" signs and offering similarly appreciative chants, with Biden obviously moved by the outpouring of what can honestly be called love from his party's strongest supporters.
Do I want to be the Grinch here? No, but it all became more than a bit much. As I noted in an August 1 Verdict column, what we are seeing is not merely a parade of pols and pundits thanking Biden for his half-century of public service. There is also a conventional wisdom that quickly congealed around the idea that Biden's retirement decision was "heroic," or "selfless," or "statesmanlike," or whatever. But why? What is it that Biden did that was so unselfish and deserving of not merely a gold watch and a handshake but a new chapter in Profiles in Courage?
Apparently, some reporting has indicated that Biden "still believed that he could win," or something like that. But that is delusional, and it is not heroic for a person to wake up from a delusion. Welcome, yes. A relief to everyone else, of course. But not at all heroic. Indeed, as I noted in my Verdict column and suggested in the first sentence of this column, Biden chose the only path forward that could have saved him from ending up a historic villain. Had he stayed in the race, he could have used raw political power to prevent himself from being pushed out against his will, and the party would have reluctantly fallen in line behind him. Not doing so is perhaps best called restraint -- because surely it felt bad to face reality and not heedlessly press onward -- but not being impetuous, while a plus on the great balance sheet of life, is not the same as selflessness.
Indeed, during the excruciating time between Biden's humiliating appearance at the non-debate in late June and his final decision in July, stubbornness and selfishness were exactly what we witnessed on a daily basis. An odd collection of people (including lefties like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but many establishment Democrats as well) awkwardly endorsed Biden and told everyone else to suck it up and move on. Again, that would have worked to get Biden into the general election. Only the most misinformed, dangerously cockeyed optimist, however, could imagine that that would have been anything short of a historic disaster, not just for the top of the ticket but for federal and state-level Democrats throughout the country.
I should add that a surprisingly large number of people who are often quite reasonable have argued that Biden was hounded out of office by nervous Nellies who were responding to (and in turn feeding) a media frenzy that turned "one bad night" into Biden's undeserved early retirement. But even if those people are right -- and I emphatically believe that they are quite wrong -- that does not change the analysis here. No matter the reason that Biden was in the position that he was in, he had become fatally weak as a candidate.
People like AOC argued reasonably that we could not know that things would go better with a change at the top of the ticket, and even I hedged some of my writings by saying that reasonable people would want to gather as much information as possible to determine the least-bad (though not necessarily the least risky) move for Democrats. It was fairly obvious, however, that this was more a matter of people like me acknowledging that we do not have access to a crystal ball. Maybe there was a timeline in the multiverse in which Biden was the least-bad choice, but even if the month up until now had been less rapturous for Democrats (with a "mini-primary" or a contested convention, for example, rather than a quick Harris-Walz accession), Trump and Trumpism would have been a strong reason for Democrats to unite. Even the less harmonious possible futures were looking better than keeping Biden in place. For Biden to think that he could win was, again, not tethered to reality.
If anything, all of this makes Biden's ultimate decision to withdraw even more a matter of personal self-preservation. He did not, after all, say that he was in possession of good information that the disaster with him at the top of the ticket would be less bad than any other option. He thus was saying that he could win but that he was willing to step aside because people were being mean and forcing his hand. (Apparently, he has been especially angry with Nancy Pelosi.) That is not heroic or selfless.
When people talk about how Biden had spent his entire life trying to become President, they are describing a simple fact -- a fact that can be spun as public-mindedness or naked ambition. When they then say that it was "brave" or "strong" of Biden to "give up his dream" of being President, however, that is fatuous nonsense. He will (unless something truly unusual happens in the next five months) finish his term in office, at which point he will leave. This is exactly what would have happened if he had stayed in the race. He was not sacrificing anything other than being humiliated -- and then blamed for all time by people who would have judged his stubbornness very harshly.
Roughly a week before Biden finally came around to reality, Michael Moore appeared on an MSNBC show and stated bluntly that Biden's enablers were engaged in "elder abuse." Dr. Jill Biden certainly is not covering herself in glory by reportedly being bitter about what happened. No one who loves that man should want to see what was happening to Joe Biden, and there remained only one kind, responsible option.
None of this means that Biden or anyone else is wrong to talk about his accomplishments as President, which have been impressive and historic. And even though Biden was not "the only Democrat who could beat Trump" in 2020, he did in fact beat Trump. (The party's big-money guys turned to Biden in a panic only after Sanders had blown out Biden and others in the early nominating contests in 2020. Can't have Bernie as President, ya know!)
So people are right to thank Biden for what he did as President. They also can thank him for getting shaken out of the belief that he should run again -- a decision, by the way, that he should have made voluntarily two years ago, but his ego was too big to carry through on the idea that he could be a one-term transitional figure. "Thanks for not insisting on taking us all down with you on your final ego trip," however, is hardly the same as saying that he was unselfishly giving up something that he had always wanted -- which would necessarily imply that he could have had what he wanted, but he nobly stepped aside.
At the top of this column, I asked whether any of this matters. The praise for Biden would not seem excessive if it were not so misplaced, but given that it is both of those things, should we care? Perhaps it is petulant to police the boundaries between just enough of the right kind of praise and too much praise for something that is not in fact unselfish. If so, I am happy to own that, simply in the name of honesty. Biden might have saved the world by stepping aside, which is saying quite a lot. He did not, however, do so by making a personal sacrifice. His many accomplishments are more than enough to merit our admiration. We should not feel the need to invent other reasons to say thank you.