This op-ed was published by The National on August 21, 2024

It was bye-bye Biden on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention. US President Joe Biden, rather than being nominated for a second term on Thursday night, was bumped to the first day of the convention. Despite the thunderous chants of “Thank you, Joe” that repeatedly broke out during his address, there was an unstable air of wistfulness. It took the return of former president Barack Obama on the second day of the convention to smooth over the rough edges of what has perforce been a fairly brutal exercise in “out with the old, in with the new.”

As Democrats have discovered over the past four weeks, it’s exactly what so many of their voters and other Americans have been looking for in a political scene that had felt stagnated and trapped between two familiar figures who are both too old and, in very different ways, unpopular. But the depth of Mr. Biden’s sacrifice has yet to sink in – no matter how relieved Democrats are that he has stepped aside for his Vice President, Kamala Harris.

Mr. Biden delivered the main body of what likely would have been his nomination acceptance remarks. He was careful to strongly endorse Ms. Harris and give her credit for being his partner in the administration. But his remarks didn’t seem fully up-to-date, apart from a passing repudiation of “all this talk [from Republicans] about how I’m angry at all those people who said I should step down, it’s not true.”

There was, however, a hint of bitterness in his joke about being “too young to be in the Senate because I wasn’t 30 yet [when first elected] and too old to stay as president” [now].

But it was mainly his greatest hits, including a litany of his accomplishments as president and sharp denunciations of Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

Ever since his disastrous debate performance against Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden has made it clear that he felt, and evidently still feels, that his undoubted accomplishments against considerable odds, especially in domestic policy and legislation, earned him a second term.

There is little doubt that the President is still wrestling with his wrenching and nearly unprecedented agreement to voluntarily surrender his party’s presidential nomination and a potential second term. He implicitly framed it as a last act of national service, which it undoubtedly was. And it’s understandable that, in a mere month and while continuing as president, he has yet to fully process the depth and historical significance of his own sacrifice.

Many commentaries have recalled the example of the Roman general Cincinnatus who, according to tradition, having been granted complete power to save Rome from a potentially mortal threat, then gave it up to return to his farm. The founders of the American Republic, steeped in classical traditions of the Enlightenment, regarded this as the apex of political and civic virtue. It certainly informed the decision of George Washington to return his commission to Congress at the conclusion of the war of independence from Britain, and also his choice not to seek a third term as president (even though he would certainly have been easily elected again).

But neither Cincinnatus nor Washington are the best historical analogs to Mr. Biden’s magnificent and heroic suppression of his own ambition and ego in the party and national interest. A more apt comparison is the decision of the second president under the US Constitution, John Adams, to accept the will of the people and the outcome of an extraordinarily bitter election won by his archrival Thomas Jefferson and accede, for the first time in US history, to a peaceful transfer of power.

Washington was a unique figure in American history, whereas Adams was the first of many subsequent presidents. And it was his decision to accept the will of the voters and voluntarily accept defeat at the ballot box that set the template for two centuries of the rule of law and primacy of elections as the ultimate arbiters in US politics.

This tradition remained unbroken until Mr. Trump’s set of elaborate schemes to unlawfully overturn the result of the 2020 election that culminated in the violent insurrection against Congress on January 6, 2021. Mr. Biden did not accept an election defeat. But he did accept the evident judgment of most of his colleagues and much of the public that he was too old and in decline to plausibly stand for another presidential term.

One of the reasons that Mr. Trump has been so discombobulated by the sudden emergence of Ms. Harris as his opponent – even though this seemed likely long before it happened – may be that he simply couldn’t imagine any rational person making Mr. Biden’s sacrifice. He appears to have been certain that the President was going to soldier on no matter what in hopes of somehow eventually winning. And, indeed, his chances were never all that bad.

To Mr. Trump, the idea of putting the interests of others, let alone abstract principles and convictions, above narrow personal interests, is simply unfathomable. This perspective also informed his notorious reported remarks, which he has unconvincingly denied, describing fallen American soldiers as “suckers and losers,” and marveling: “I just don’t get it. What was in it for them?” That’s also why Mr. Trump was so taken with fantasies that Mr. Biden would burst into the convention and somehow try to reclaim his nomination that he aired them in public in both speech and writing.

It isn’t just that Mr. Trump likely cannot imagine behaving in Mr. Biden’s civic-virtuous manner. He was projecting his own grandiosity on Mr. Biden’s humility (no matter how reluctant). It wasn’t just that Mr. Trump desperately wanted to run against Mr. Biden rather than Ms. Harris, although he has made that abundantly clear. It’s more that not stepping down is exactly what Mr. Trump might have done if he somehow found himself in Mr. Biden’s shoes.

Mr. Biden’s actual convention speech was essentially underwhelming and certainly failed to take advantage of the grand historical context his extraordinary gesture of selflessness occupies. But if it’s too soon for him to seriously and publicly reflect on all of that, it’s surely understandable. He still may be coming to terms with the bitterness of the pill he has forced himself to swallow.

He probably won’t command an audience of this size again, but with five more months left in the White House, he still has ample opportunity to find a suitable forum for public reflection on his brave and unprecedented decision.

Both the Democratic Party and the American public are evidently relieved to be moving on from Mr Biden. And the country may be preparing to similarly bid farewell to Mr Trump.

But in the long run, the judgment of history is likely to echo the crowd at the DNC with a resounding “thank you, Joe.”