Of Torches Passed

How President Biden's Decision to Terminate His Campaign Echoes the Transitions of Past Administrations

President Biden’s July 24th speech was historic, not only because he announced his decision to abruptly end his campaign for reelection, but also because of the speech’s echoes from Presidents past.

Echoing LBJ

The obvious echo comes from the famous Oval Office speech President Lyndon Johnson delivered in March 1968, when he announced: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” Before his announcement, the entire country, and indeed the entire world, assumed that LBJ would run. But the strong criticism he received, particularly from fellow Democrats and growing numbers of young Americans, for pursuing what was increasingly viewed as an unwinnable war, had taken its toll. Anti-war and civil rights protests marked a divided nation in the late ‘60s, and Johnson became the focal point of much of that division. For all the good that he accomplished during his Presidency, most notably in getting Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, history would remember LBJ first and foremost as the architect of a tragically ill-advised war.

Despite that echo from the past, Biden’s situation was in one key respect the mirror image of Johnson’s. Johnson was losing support among voters because of actions he had already taken in mounting an unpopular war. Biden’s problem among his supporters was not principally grounded in what he had already done, but in what he would or would not be able to do going forward.

President Biden’s supporters credit him for such achievements as funding badly needed infrastructure improvements and responding to the growing crisis of climate change. They are more divided on his handling of the economy and his support of Israel’s war against Hamas. His opponents primarily criticize his border policy, criticisms that paradoxically are both well-founded and unfair. (A topic for another day.)

But the greatest challenge to President Biden’s bid for reelection was his age. For months if not years, it has been difficult to watch him walk across a stage. He had become noticeably stiff, which made him look older and weaker than his opponent. Although some questioned whether his physical stiffness also suggested a deterioration in his mental capacity, it wasn’t until that fateful June 27th debate that the answers would materialize. To use a common baseball metaphor, Biden had lost something (quite a bit, actually) on his fastball. Within minutes of the debate’s opening, his supporters were overcome by a new worry, not only about his ability to serve a second term, but about his ability to win reelection.

Biden, his staff, and his campaign tried to assuage his supporters’ concerns, but their efforts missed their target. Their most common response to questions about the President’s ability to win in November and then continue to govern was to focus on his past accomplishments. That response fell flat because it failed to address the real problem. Nothing that the President or anyone else in his camp said could overcome his supporters’ loss of confidence, sparked by the debate, about his ability to remain effective, let alone stem the unmerciful tide of advancing age.

After weeks of deliberations, punctuated by an unexpected bout with Covid, President Biden finally made the decision to end his bid for reelection. He announced it in a short letter on July 21st. Three days later, he gave a speech from the Oval Office elaborating on his decision. He said:

America is at an inflection point, one of those rare moments in history when the decisions we make now will determine [the] fate of our nation and the world for decades to come.  America is going to have to choose between moving forward or backward, between hope and hate, between unity and division.

And after stating that personal ambition must be set aside to save democracy, he continued:

So, I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.  That’s the best way to unite our nation.

Given the immediate, overwhelmingly positive reaction among his supporters and undecided voters, it seems clear he made the right choice.

The wording of President Biden’s Oval Office speech, and particularly his use of the phrase “to pass the torch to a new generation,” is striking. He was not just opening the Democratic field to a younger candidate. He was acknowledging an overarching need for a generational transition, and leading his party in bringing it about. His sacrificial act signals a sea change in the American political landscape. It also echoes another historic speech by another President, delivered more than 60 years earlier.

Echoing JFK

On January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address. At 43, he was the youngest president in U.S. history. He narrowly defeated Republican candidate Richard M. Nixon, who had just served eight years as President Eisenhower’s Vice President. While JFK had been a heroic PT boat commander during the Second World War, the outgoing President Eisenhower had been Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, responsible for the successful D-Day invasion that would ultimately lead to Hitler’s defeat. Sixteen years after that war, the presidential transition from the 70-year-old Ike to the 43-year-old Kennedy truly did represent a generational change, a theme that resounded in Kennedy’s address:

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Not only did JFK represent a new generation of Presidential leadership, but members of his cabinet and staff, including his younger brother appointed to serve as Attorney General, also represented a break from a more elderly past. Even his Vice President, LBJ, was still in his early 50s when they took office, closer in age to JFK than to the outgoing Eisenhower. President Kennedy’s inaugural address represented a clarion call to these younger generations of Americans to unite with his administration to usher in a new era of American leadership, both domestically and internationally. Despite the many growing challenges his inaugural address identified (and I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read or listen to it), for many his inauguration brought with it a spirit of hope and a vision of a more peaceful, benevolent, strong, and prosperous nation, ready to tackle and subdue the greatest dangers that lay ahead.

No doubt, Biden and his speech writers intended to echo JFK’s words and sentiment, as they, too, sought to bring about a new generation of leadership, signaled by the President’s swift endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor, an endorsement quickly joined by a groundswell of endorsements from other party leaders. Whatever one may think of the new candidate’s policies and agenda, which are still works in progress, it’s hard to deny that we are witnessing at least the beginning of another generational shift like the one JFK envisioned. It’s also hard to deny that this shift is a breath of fresh air to those Americans who dreaded another contest between two old white men when there are so many capable people from other demographics who could rightfully be seen as more representative of America’s changing population. To paraphrase the famous phrase James Carville coined for Bill Clinton’s first Presidential campaign, “It’s the future, stupid.”

Our Inflection Point

As many have pointed out, the relinquishment of power is a rare event in politics. It no doubt does not come easy to those prevailed upon to let power go. We saw that in 2020, are witnessing it again today (in Venezuela), and have seen or read about it countless times in world history. Eventually, however, the forces of change become intractable, as one generation fades and another begins to take its place.

President Biden was right, in the end, to recognize that America has reached just such an inflection point. The only question now, to be answered in November, is what we Americans are going to do about it.