RUTHFULLY YOURS

Joe Biden delivered a eulogy for his presidency and his political career from the Oval Office Wednesday evening. It was a sad, sluggish ending to a life in politics, decades in the Senate, two terms as vice president, and finally a single term as president.

President Biden needed to accomplish three things in the speech:

1. Explain why he decided to withdraw from the race after months of insisting he would stay in and after receiving 14 million primary votes;
2. Convince the country that he is still fit to serve the remaining months of his term; and
3. Promote the candidacy of his replacement atop the Democratic ticket, Kamala Harris

He certainly promoted Harris and indirectly attacked Donald Trump, effectively calling him a threat to democracy. But he did nothing to explain why he withdrew from the race and nothing to convince a worried country that he was still fit to serve as president.

He didn’t even try to explain why he withdrew. He simply quoted John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech that it “was time to pass the torch a new generation.” But quoting JFK doesn’t explain why Joe suddenly reached that epiphany last weekend, rather than a year ago, before he chose to run and cleared the field of other Democratic candidates. What changed? Biden’s speech evaded the question.

There are lots of plausible answers. It might have been his catastrophic debate performance, which convinced many Americans that he no longer had the cognitive capacity to lead the country. It might have been his dismal poll numbers, the lowest of any president since modern polling began (even before the debate performance). It might have been polling in swing states, which showed he was unlikely to win the electoral votes he needs. It might have been the intense pressure from elected Democrats and unhappy donors, some of it in public, much of it behind closed doors.

The best reporting says Biden didn’t jump, he was pushed. He was ousted in a back-room coup, led by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. We still don’t know which carrots and sticks they used to convince Biden to step down. Reports are that Pelosi told Biden, “We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way.” We don’t know what “the hard way” was, but we do know the former speaker of the House was working the phones aggressively to remove Biden. She gave him a couple of weeks to do it the easy way — and he resisted ferociously.

Then, over the weekend, Biden caved. We don’t know why. His press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said it was not a health problem. He’s perfectly fine, she said, an answer that continues the cover-up about Biden’s condition the White House has maintained for months. But if poor health wasn’t the reason, then what was? Biden won’t say. He certainly didn’t in his Oval Office speech.

Biden’s health wasn’t just a reelection problem. It’s a governing problem now. His frailty raises serious questions about whether he is fit to serve until mid-January 2025. It is not correct to say, as many Republicans do, that if he is not fit to serve another four years, then he is not fit to serve now. It is possible to be healthy enough to serve now but doubtful about the future.

Biden needed to address these health issues, but made no effort to do so. None. Polls show most Americans are genuinely concerned about the president’s fail health and cognitive decline and wonder if he can continue leading the country for another four and half months. Indeed, they wonder if he is really running things now and, if he isn’t, who is? Biden’s brief speech won’t reassure them. Although he didn’t make any major gaffes, he hardly gave a strong performance. He simply read the teleprompter in a soft, gravelly voice for eleven minutes and said he would continue to serve.

The most forceful portion of the speech was its partisan conclusion, which was less about Kamala Harris and more about the looming “threat to democracy” — and we all know who Biden meant. He never mentioned Donald Trump’s name, but he was the obvious target. Even when he condemned political violence, Biden refused to mention the assassination attempt on Trump.

Generosity was not the theme of the speech. The theme was that he had saved our union from Trump and that the threat was the central issue of this campaign. Without ever mentioning Trump’s name, he told the nation that failing to elect Kamala Harris would endanger our democracy. The country was at “an inflection point,” he said, before stumbling through Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote about our form of government. As Franklin exited the Continental Congress, a woman asked him whether we had a monarchy or republic. “A republic,” he replied, “if you can keep it.”

Franklin was right that our republic must be sustained, not taken for granted and allowed to decay, to be replaced by tyranny. Biden’s speech clearly implied that a Trump presidency would usher in that tyranny and end our constitutional republic. The Harris campaign will run with that theme until November.

On that somber note, Joe Biden ended his political career. He spoke in soft, faltering tones that did little to answer Americans’ question or reassure them our nation is in capable hands until January 20, 2025.