One thing jumped out at me when reflecting upon the extraordinary decision of Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race: we will all be here one day. Age and time will come for me. It will come for you.
Age, the wages of time and their effects on our bodies, our faculties, can be delayed, but never denied. Someday, the family will sit us down gently, trying to explain why they have to take the car keys away as our driving is not the same standard as it once was; why we are being retired or replaced because of robotics or AI or the need for a “fresh (aka younger) perspective. Notwithstanding that some jobs we perform cannot be ‘upskilled,’ ‘re-skilled.'
I recall making the prediction in high school that the young, articulate, hardworking junior senator from Delaware with the compelling career trajectory and tragic backstory just might win the Democratic nomination and become the POTUS someday. As clearly, I remember being told by those supposedly better versed in American politics than me that he was shallow, a pale imitation of the Kennedys and stood no chance of ever winning the brass ring.
Not for the first time were the ‘experts’ off-base. It turns out that history did at last give Biden his opportunity and he took it, defying the naysayers. But neither he nor his nemesis, Donald Trump (who has admittedly aged differently), can win the race against the ticking clock. That Biden has worn his age less well is but biological luck, and the same fortune which gave him his dream has now abandoned him, like so many members of his party.
One can look at time in two ways: as a relentless predator who stalks us all our lives, ready to strike, leading to an inevitable end for all without fear or favour. Or, as a companion who accompanies us on this journey through existence, reminding us to cherish every moment as they will never come again.
Whenever Roman emperors and generals rode through the Eternal City in triumph on a golden chariot behind them would stand a salve holding a garland over their heads and whispering the reminder that all glory was fleeting. What was true then and now is that time is our most precious commodity – not wealth, not material goods, not social standing and acclaim, for they are ephemeral and can even be self-delusional. I’m not saying that these don’t matter -- they can ease our passage through life and mitigate against hardship, stress, and privation. Yet they can be replaced. What we lose to time that's far more intangible, much more impactful and even irreplaceable, may not be.
Take a second and think about those in our lives whom you have lost. Family members, colleagues, friends, lovers, and partners. If one is religious than there is the somewhat comforting belief that we will meet them again someday in Heaven or whatever version of the afterlife our religion professes there to be. But that still does not reduce the effect of missing their presence in our lives now.
So, give some thought to the current President of the United States. Whether or not one agrees with his policies, effect on the country and by extension, the world, what is undeniable is that he has spent fifty years of his life serving the nation he so clearly loves: thirty-six years in the Senate, eight in the vice presidency and four as commander-in-chief through some very challenging times. Undoubtedly, he’s no longer the man he used to be when he was VP, or even as the Democratic party's nominee in 2020. It is also arguable that he hung on too long and should have retired after one term having passed more legislation (some of it on a bipartisan basis too) in his four years than most presidents did in eight.
Americans witnessed the loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident in 1972, a few weeks after he was first elected to the Senate and just before Christmas. They’ve seen him grieve the loss of Beau, his eldest son, to brain cancer in 2015. They’ve watched another, Hunter, endure the ravages and indignities of drug addiction and criminality, then seen him used as a political stick weight to beat his father with.
Biden was abandoned first by his health before he was abandoned by his political allies. An apparent cold and hectic travel schedule was blamed for his catastrophic debate performance against Trump. The COVID-19 diagnosis, coming so soon after he declared that only a health issue could compel him to withdraw his candidacy seems to have sealed his political destiny.
Doggedly (or obstinately), up until he began quarantining for the infection, he insisted publicly that voters overlook the ravages of age and time and focus on the vast experience he brought to the job, for arguably, next to George H.W. Bush, he was one of the most qualified occupiers of the Oval Office.
His is that quintessential American belief — outmoded, it appears and once championed by the tv show ‘The West Wing’ — that nice leaders, moral leaders, ethical leaders, and honest leaders can finish first.
But polls showing a shift toward Trump were making Biden’s arguments appear hollow. The subsequent assassination attempt on the Trump, his defiant response (and the epic imagery which it engendered) combined with an image of a united GOP were just sauce for the goose.
In taking his final bows in a series of what can only be called "goodbye tours," he slips into the wings of a stage he once dominated. Which is an appropriate analogy, for politics is often about theatre. And Joe Biden’s tale, had he lusted after a crown instead of the Oval Office, he might easily have figured in one of Shakespeare’s tragedies as a modern King Lear.
The Bard’s tragedies all feature a tragic hero who is doomed to a catastrophic ending by a tragic flaw. If Biden is that central figure and his presidential campaign pullout — the end of his political dream — his Achilles heel, may have been as prosaic as ambition, which in and of itself, is not always a bad thing. For his ambition was not only for himself, but for his nation.
This was behind the grandiose belief that he and only he could prevent Trump from winning the next election and returning to the White House. This kept him in the race even when his certainty appeared to others as a hazy dream at best, a delusion at worst, even when it became obvious to all that he had lost his political edge, something his old boss Barack Obama had always feared. That was precisely why Obama had awarded Biden the Medal of Freedom, then quietly shuffled him to one side of the stage in favor of someone whom he thought could defeat Trump, the equally Shakespearean character Hillary Clinton.
You don’t have to be a theatre aficionado to identify the dramatic irony.
Like Lear, Biden could also be accused of listening only to the flattery of his closest advisers, and rejecting the honesty of Cordelia-like figures in his party who have been saying for much longer that his age and health were major challenges.
The only departure from Shakespeare’s model is the absence of fate. It didn’t have to be this way. Biden’s tragedy and the crisis his party now faces as his successor Kamala Harris went down to defeat could have been avoided. For such an avid student of history there were many such lessons in leaders who stayed well past their sell-by date and were compelled to leave not on their schedule but on others’: Thatcher, Blair, Churchill, are but some examples. It is a lesson Macron and Trudeau have not yet learned.
The situation most commentators have been raising as analogous, though not without its imperfections, recalls that in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson was facing stiff resistance for his Vietnam war policies from within his own party as he sought the Democratic nomination for reelection. Almost tied in the popular vote with renegade Senator Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary, he dropped out as a candidate on March 31 of that year.
The eventual Democratic Party nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, won the contest (marred by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy) and had sufficient lead time to fight the presidential campaign, though he could not prevail against the Republican, Richard Nixon, albeit losing by a single percentage point in the popular vote.
All the factors that led to Biden’s decision to drop out of the race — the mutinous calls by leading members of his party, the sudden remorseless pragmatic stinginess of deep-pocketed financial donors, the protective, isolating cocoon of his inner circle shielding him from the reality staring back at him from the mirror — could have come much earlier and left Kamala Harris or another potential successor, in a better state with more lead time to ensure a smoother transition than whatever was cobbled together in the shortened time frame left.
As is their wont, historians and biographers will spend the coming decades in debate over these tumultuous developments. Biden, in turn, will duly be rated in “greatness” or “infamy” in accordance with his record and whichever faction of writers happens to be dominant or in fashion at the time.
But a couple of things seem beyond question. His decision to withdraw from the race offers a fork in the road from potential electoral defeat to potential success for the party he has spent his time championing.
And, as hard as this situation is -- an end to a career he’d never ever expected to face – there is some succor in the fact that this will never be the worse time in Joe Biden’s life. He’s already weathered two horrendous incidents that would test the mettle of any person. In that sense, he has survived what drove Lear to madness and ignominy.
As his family gets him back full time, Biden can take succor in the fact that while his departure from the political stage was rough, even shoddy, in whatever years are left to him, he will face age and time squarely without the distraction of phone calls at 3 am, the need to provide the baying media with pithy sound bites, and dealing with all too-common fools.
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