Joe Biden's Final Act of Greatness
Only his closest friends and family can advise him on the way forward. But the only “hopeful” way forward, I believe, is for him to step aside and be the one to breathe new life into his party.
By Michael Judge
I’m in Tokyo visiting family this summer, filing TFP posts from my wife’s home country and our 12-year-old son’s favorite place in the world, his grandparents’ house. I was planning a short vacation from writing this week but something disturbing derailed my plans: the U.S. presidential debate.
I watched a bit of it with my wife’s father, who’s 81, the same age as President Biden. His jaw dropped when he saw the “leader of the free world” staring blankly into the lights, stumbling over words and sentences, clearly confused—frightened even—a bit like an elderly friend who’s missed the bus.
“Biden and me. Same age,” Gigi (short for grandpa in Japanese) said, in his gentle, broken English; his voice full of concern and compassion, as if he understood the indignity Joe Biden was experiencing.
Gigi is not a politician, or a public figure by any means. He’s a public-bath owner, like his father before him. He’s tough and wiry—his nickname was katonbo (tiny dragonfly) when he was a kid. Back in the day he was known for his movie-star good looks and never-say-no attitude.
To see and hear on stage, for example, King Lear’s decline from strength to frailty, wisdom to uncertainty, is to experience it ourselves: “We are not ourselves When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind To suffer with the body.”
But in the past few years he’s grown weaker, his voice softer. Last year he was diagnosed with a rare heart disease called cardiac amyloidosis, caused by the buildup of abnormal proteins in the heart. He’s on a new, breakthrough medicine that’s helped, but his stamina is low. He recently lost his driver's license.
I wish you could have seen the expression on Gigi’s face, watching Joe Biden, a man his age whom he respects, being subjected to what he clearly saw as a humiliation. He was shocked and bewildered, but above all angry that Biden’s advisors had allowed the spectacle to take place. “How could this happen?” his expression said. “How could your country allow such a thing?”
I’ve been asking myself the same question. The real answer, I think, isn’t a political one but a societal one. Modern American society, for lack of a better word, has become so obsessed with competition, productivity, and prolonging life that we’ve lost sight of our own greatest strength—our shared humanity.
Our politics, like our business practices, have become a blood sport. Remember your Gordon Gekko: “Greed is good.” Tellingly, the word “loser” is our culture’s biggest insult—no matter the simple truth that for one to win another must lose. Another awful phrase is saying an elderly person is “failing”—as if the natural progression from life to death is a test.
This inhumanity, even as we’ve seen great progress in other aspects of life, has robbed us of our ability to truly see one another. As educator Claudia MacMillian wrote in a 2022 TFP piece titled “Learning to Be Human”: “One does not have to look far to see that we suffer from a paucity both of wisdom about the complex human situation and the language needed to express our heart’s desires. These things the proper study of great literature cultivates and provides.”
Yes, I’m arguing that the humanities—the thoughtful study of history, religion, art, and literature—are the right medicine for the sickness in our politics. To see ourselves in the other is exactly what great art and great literature teach us.
In other words, we don’t read Shakespeare or Homer or Emily Dickinson or James Baldwin merely to learn about another historical time or place; we read them to learn the art of living—how to struggle, how to love, how to live, how to forgive, and, yes, how to grow old and die with dignity.
To see and hear on stage, for example, King Lear’s decline from strength to frailty, wisdom to uncertainty, is to experience it ourselves: “We are not ourselves When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind To suffer with the body.”
Even the mighty Achilles, the greatest warrior of Greek mythology, saw his own father’s human frailty in the elderly King Priam (whose son he’d just slain), embraced him, and broke bread with his foe.
Donald Trump, heel spurs and all, is no Achilles. But just maybe—if Biden steps aside and lets another, younger, more vibrant Democrat run, the majority of Americans will see it as, in the words of The New York Times, “the best service that Mr. Biden can provide to a country that he has nobly served for so long.”
At the very least, as my former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal put it, “For the good of the country, more even than their party, Democrats have some hard thinking to do about whether they need to replace him at the top of their ticket.” The Journal went on to say, rightly I believe, “This isn’t a partisan thought; it’s a patriotic one.”
I agree. If Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and disrespect for the Constitution and the rule of law are a direct threat to American democracy, as many Democrats argue, then running an enfeebled opponent against him is too.
It’s also a threat to the safety of our allies in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and around the globe. Gigi’s alarm at the sight of Biden’s blank stare was as much fear for his own country as for ours. Like NATO, the U.S.-Japan security alliance has been a cornerstone of postwar peace in Asia for more than 75 years. A U.S. leader who can’t command respect (Biden) for these alliances, or one who wants to diminish them (Trump) are both frightening prospects.
The bigger question is, as investigative journalist Seymour Hersh asked bluntly in his most recent Substack post, “Who Is Running the Country?” The day after the debate, Biden said, “I didn’t have a great night, but neither did Trump.” He then added, “I promise you we’re going to win this election!”
But that won’t answer the question asked by Hersh, who is running the country? “Whatever happens,” Hersh wrote, “we have a president—now fully unveiled—who just may not be responsible for what he does in the coming campaign, not to mention his actions in the Middle East and Ukraine.”
In 2016, after the devastating loss of his son Beau to brain cancer, a grieving Joe Biden, then 72, refused to run for president. In a brave and deeply human speech, he said, due to his overwhelming grief, “the window on mounting a realistic campaign for president” had “closed.” At this stage in his life, many of his longtime supporters and greatest admirers believe the window on a second Biden term has closed.
This doesn’t have to be a tragedy. It can, on the contrary, be a triumph for common sense, common decency, and most importantly the Biden family and the political party they have devoted their lives to. As Howard Zin, the American historian, author, professor, playwright, and activist, wisely said, “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.”
Only Joe Biden’s closest friends and family can advise him on the way forward. But the only “hopeful” way forward, I believe, is for him to step aside and be the one to breathe new life into the party he loves. The poet and novelist Jay Parini, a longtime Biden family friend, put it this way, in a beautifully respectful and humane open letter to the 46th president published by CNN:
Dear Joe,
I write to you urgently, as your old neighbor from Scranton. My mother was your babysitter, and you and I sat at my kitchen table many decades ago. I’ve been your admirer for years, sending you checks, knocking on doors and writing pieces supporting you. …
You’ve done your work, and you’ve done it well. The nation is stronger because of you. …
We both share what I like to think of as Scranton values. We grew up among hard-working ordinary people who understood that this is a country based on equality. Our neighbors were Irish, Italian, Ukrainian and Lebanese immigrants. We believed in this place called the United States of America, where values and character matter.
Be the great man you are, Joe, the one we’ve seen in action and admired for many decades. We salute you. It’s tough, I’m sure. But your final act of greatness lies right before you now.
Do it. Withdraw.
He has a moral responsibility to step aside. This has gone on for too long.
Under article 25 of the US Constitution he can be removed from office and this should have been pursued.
I am the same age as Biden, in a lot better shape, and know my only employment could be as night watchman in a mattress factory. I would bring my own pillow. Being 80 is something we have to accept and consider ourselves lucky we get to see the sun come up.
Dear Mike,
Who would you like the Democratic presidential candidate to be instead of Joe Biden?
Much love to you and your dear father-in-law and family,
Aunt Charlotte