I’m no historian — they call journalism history in a hurry, and that’s the best I could hope for — but I have an idea how Joe Biden will be remembered.
It won’t be as a transformational president — the well-meaning comparisons to FDR and LBJ are, in my view, way overblown — or for his success in getting some high-profile bills through a divided Congress.
If all goes well, which is not usually the way to bet, Biden will be remembered as the person who rescued American democracy.
But more than that, he would have done it twice.
And if that turns out to be his legacy, that may not necessarily mean he would be seen as a great president, but it would definitely mean that he would be remembered as a great American.
Twice, it has fallen to Biden to be the person called on to stop Donald Trump, whose capture of the Republican Party despite his simultaneous assaults on truth, decency and democracy will challenge actual historians for decades.
And if in this second bid, it meant Biden would have to suffer humiliation along the way, and even if it meant that he would come to believe his party had betrayed him, that would make his role in preventing a Trump restoration that much more admirable.
When Biden gave his late-night speech Monday at the Democratic convention, following the teary embrace with his daughter, Ashley, who had introduced him, and as the “Thank you, Joe!” chants rang out, the emotion in the room was obviously genuine.
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But the thank-yous had a double meaning. They were thanking Biden for his many years of service, but mostly they were thanking him for stepping aside. Yes, he was pushed. And, yes, in the many thanks given to Biden that night by speaker after speaker, the fact that he was pushed went entirely unmentioned, including by Biden.
Someone called it the elephant in the donkey room. And during his speech, the cameras repeatedly went to Nancy Pelosi, who was seen cheering him on, but who had been the one prominent Democrat bold enough to publicly insist that a very reluctant Biden must give way.
But when Biden said, “I love the job, but I love my country more,” you believed him. Certainly, those in the convention room believed him.
He didn’t have to leave. To call on him to voluntarily give up the most powerful job in the world is a monumental ask. But it’s almost impossible to imagine what this convention would have looked like if he had refused to go. I can only quote James Carville, who had said it would have been like four days of sitting shiva.
Instead of mourning, there was the joy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have embraced as a campaign theme. As Democrats gathered for that first night, there was wild enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton. For AOC. For Jasmine Crockett. For Raphael Warnock. For all things big-D Democratic.
No one could have predicted what has happened in the month, and that’s all it has been, since Biden stepped aside. No one predicted that Harris would catch fire in the way that she has. No one saw Walz as a potential vice-presidential nominee for our time.
No one knew that Harris, following Biden’s endorsement, could wrangle the support of so many Democratic leaders so successfully or so quickly. Many people, including me, were skeptical that she was the best choice.
And no one — especially Trump, who can’t seem to get over the fact that Biden has left the race — knew that Harris could pull even, and now even slightly ahead, in the polls.
But nothing since Trump came down that escalator makes sense.
As crazy as these past few months have been, starting with Biden’s disastrous debate, you have to remember how strange Biden’s 2020 run for the presidency was. After getting clobbered in both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, his late-career run for the presidency — his first attempt was in 1988— seemed doomed.
It was rescued, in large part, by South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, who helped Biden secure the Black vote in the South Carolina primary and an easy victory. The desperate Democratic Party establishment, worried that Bernie Sanders might win the nomination and prove a too easy mark for Trump, persuaded Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to drop out and swing their support to Biden.
Then Biden, who represented stability in a time of rampant instability, a time that many Americans seem to have somehow forgotten during the election cycle, did the rest.
This time, of course, was far stranger — Biden, virtually unchallenged, clinching the nomination and then dropping out just weeks ahead of the convention.
Meanwhile, Trump was campaigning while being indicted and then convicted and still easily won the Republican primary. After the debate, after the assassination attempt, it seemed that the convicted felon — also the adjudicated rapist and fraud, the January 6 cheerleader, the Big Lie promulgator — was on his way back to the White House.
Now, Trump seems to have lost his way. Or maybe his mind. He really did claim that Harris was using AI to fake the size of her crowd, because, as Trump continually tells us, size is everything.
Biden may never have drawn Trump-like crowds. Thanks to COVID, he didn’t even have a live convention in 2020. But the Chicago hall was packed Monday night.
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Biden’s speech, set for prime time, may have started a little late, which some were trying to say was a conspiracy. And if Biden was high energy, despite the late hour, that didn’t mean his speech didn’t tend to ramble. And yet, the line near the end — “America, America, I gave my best to you” — was both perfectly memorable and perfectly Bidenesque. The crowd roared.
If Biden had been that sharp during the debate, he would probably still be the Democratic candidate. Still, you couldn’t help — or at least I couldn’t — being thankful that Harris was now the one who would carry the message that Trump must be defeated, meaning that Biden’s age and mental acuity are no longer a factor and that Trump’s age and mental acuity are now at issue.
When Biden was done, after Harris had hugged him on the stage, the torch had been successfully passed. And for the rest of convention, the only person thinking about Biden will probably be Donald Trump.
But history, that’s a different matter. History won’t forget Biden — particularly if Harris, as Biden did in 2020, can hold up her end of the bargain.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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