Another view: More than a bad night, age caught up with Biden – Duluth News Tribune

At a passionate campaign rally on Friday, June 28, President Joe Biden tried to convince American voters that his alarming performance in the previous day’s debate in Atlanta was an aberration: “I don’t speak as well as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong.”

The 81-year-old president has shown himself to be more capable of telling the truth than his opponent, former President Donald Trump. But the sad truth is that Biden should withdraw from the race, for the sake of the nation he served so admirably for half a century.

There is precedent for a president, duly elected by the American people, to step down gracefully in the national interest. Tired of constant attacks from his opponents and eager to avoid being seen as an American dictatorship, George Washington, with the help of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, drafted what is one of the most important documents in our nation’s history. Washington, who decided not to seek a third term, never delivered what is known as his Farewell Address; it was written in September 1796 and first published in newspapers across the country two months later.

Not one to lie, our first president, then 64, acknowledged that the time had come to retire. “Every day the increasing weight of years warns me more and more that the shadow of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome,” Washington wrote.

The shadow of retirement is now necessary for President Biden.

Throughout the 90-minute debate, the president failed to convey a coherent and competent vision for America’s future. He failed to lay out the most fundamental aspects of his agenda. He failed to take credit for the important accomplishments of his three and a half years in office. And he failed to counter the prevarications of an opponent who, according to CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale, lied 30 times during the debate, or about once for every 90 seconds of his allotted time.

President Biden’s spokespeople have tried to downplay his debate performance. His advisers have claimed he has a cold. Vice President Kamala Harris has argued that the leader of the free world should be judged on his entire presidency, not just one night. Former President Barack Obama took to social media and said, “Bad debate nights happen.”

These responses are insulting to the American people.

It wasn’t a bad night; it was confirmation of the worst fears of some of Biden’s most ardent supporters: that after 36 years in the U.S. Senate, eight more as vice president and one term in the White House, age had finally caught up with him.

This moment was envisioned by Democrats and Biden’s advisers as he sought the party’s nomination for president in 2020. There was serious public debate about Biden’s promise to serve only one term, then 77. That debate acknowledged the obvious. If reelected, Biden would be 86 when his presidency ends in January 2029. There is no historical precedent for this. And now the signs of decline are visible, as the debate made clear.

President Biden’s ability to withstand the mental and physical rigors of another four-year term would be a concern regardless of his opponent. The fact that he is the only obstacle to Trump’s return to the Oval Office raises the stakes considerably.

Trump has already hinted at what his second term might look like. He has spoken of his desire to get “revenge” on his political opponents and told Fox News host Sean Hannity at a town hall last year that he would be a dictator from day one of his presidency (but only day one).

Trump’s campaign has tried to dismiss the comments as exaggerated. That might have been easier to accept if Trump had not tried to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and repeatedly and falsely claimed that the election was stolen from him.

That position alone should have disqualified Trump in the eyes of voters. The former president’s personal and professional conduct has been egregious enough that his former vice president, his chief of staff and many cabinet members have disavowed him. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, said he cast a blank ballot in the state’s Republican primary, refusing to vote for the man who tried to subvert the electoral process.

The fact that Trump remains at the top of the Republican ticket speaks to the deep divisions and tribalism that define American politics in the 21st century.

When President George Washington informed the nation of his decision not to seek a third term, he issued a warning about the insidious nature of political parties, then in their infancy. “They are liable, in the course of time and events, to become powerful engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unscrupulous men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to appropriate to themselves the reins of government.”

Trump’s debate performance should have prompted his party’s leaders to repudiate his lies. But it didn’t.

Biden has pledged to do everything in his power to prevent Trump from returning to the White House. The election is four months away. If he truly hopes to defeat Trump, he must pass the torch to the next generation of Democratic leaders and urge the party to nominate another candidate at its convention in Chicago in August.

To achieve this, it will take a series of massive and unprecedented legal and regulatory actions to get Biden’s successor nominated and on the ballot in every state. This is difficult and necessary work that must begin immediately.

Democrats have a number of talented and principled leaders who could advance the president’s agenda and offer the nation a viable alternative to Trump. The right candidate should make appealing to both Republican and Democratic voters a priority.

Biden’s candidacy was based on his status as president and the belief among Democratic leaders and pollsters that he had the best chance of beating Trump in November. That is no longer the case. This reality may be hard to accept for a man whose personal and political life has been defined by resilience, but it is true.

Biden deserves a better exit from public life than the one he endured when he left the debate stage. If he displays the courage and dignity that have characterized his political career, he could follow in the footsteps of the first president of the United States and look forward to retirement, confident that he has once again served his country with honor.

— Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editorial Board