President Biden in the Oval Office on Wednesday. Photo via the Biden White House.
I found President Biden’s address Wednesday night to be sad and moving. His theme was democracy and how we can preserve it. His 2020 victory over Donald Trump saved us from authoritarianism to an extent that no one realized when they cast their ballots. After all, it was only afterwards that Trump launched his effort to steal the election by any means necessary, including fomenting violence in the halls of Congress.
Biden proved not to be up to the challenge of defeating Trump again. Fortunately, by stepping aside and handing off his campaign to Vice President Kamala Harris, he has energized the anti-Trump movement and given it a chance of prevailing this November, though there are no guarantees.
There was nothing in Biden’s 11-minute Oval Office speech that would make anyone doubt the wisdom of his decision to end his re-election campaign. His voice was hoarse and halting, and before you blame COVID, keep in mind that this is the Biden we have come to know in recent months. Louise Aronson, a gerontologist who was one of the formerly anonymous physicians interviewed by The New Yorker last week, observed for The Atlantic (free link) that “his voice was weak, he stumbled occasionally over his prepared remarks, and his physical presence was diminished from what it once was.” She added:
Part of what was so excruciating about watching Biden hold on to his hope of winning a second term was seeing someone struggle to accept that their best-case scenario might be impossible. Variations of this situation play out daily in clinics and hospitals, and if you have a shred of empathy, it’s always heartbreaking. Yet few such difficult conversations — or the loud silences that too often take the place of these conversations — happen so publicly. Watching this one reminded me how unwelcome they are in American life, even in the offices of physicians delivering bad news.
The historian Heather Cox Richardson has a thorough overview of Biden’s address, writing that he joins George Washington in his willingness to walk away and John Adams in presiding over a peaceful transition. “Like them, Biden gave up the pursuit of power for himself in order to demonstrate the importance of democracy,” Richardson said. “After the speech, the White House served ice cream to the Bidens and hundreds of White House staffers in the Rose Garden.”
And I’m sorry, but I have to single out Peter Baker of The New York Times for a particularly sour “news analysis” (I’m not wasting a gift link on it). Here’s an excerpt that is very much in keeping with the rest of what he wrote:
What there was not much of was introspection about how he had gotten to this moment of indignity. He may be focused on the soul of America, but he revealed little of his own. Indeed, if there has been much soul searching over these past days and weeks of personal and political trauma that led to this reluctant end of his storied half-century political career, the search has been called off. Or at least the results were not reported.
I don’t think Baker would have been satisfied unless Biden confessed he was becoming senile and thanked the Times for pointing it out. Baker takes an enormous amount of grief from liberal readers for his resolute both-sides-ism, and I often find the criticism to be overwrought. This time, though, any brickbats directed his way are well deserved.
Wednesday’s address was not a farewell for Biden. After all, he’ll be president until next January, and I’m sure he’ll be out on the campaign trail with Harris. Still, it marked the latest in a series of closing acts for the president beginning with his Sunday announcement. We are going to miss this good and decent man.