Too often, the hardest thing to do is the right thing.
That’s what President Joe Biden did when he ended his re-election bid. It was an act of selflessness, of devotion to country … of patriotism.
And it had to have cost him.
Anyone who watched the president in the weeks following his disastrous performance in his debate last month with former President Donald Trump could see how difficult it was for him to stand down.
If one quality has defined Biden as both a public and private man, it has been his refusal to quit.
More than 50 years ago, when he first won election to the U.S. Senate, his life collapsed. His first wife and his children were in an automobile accident. His wife and his young daughter died. His sons were severely injured and traumatized.
A blow such as that one would have knocked a lesser, weaker man to his knees.
Biden, though, became a distinguished senator who demonstrated a knack for working even with those who disagreed with him. At 5 p.m. every day when the Senate was in session, he left the office to take the train home to Delaware to be a devoted, involved father to his two boys.
Biden suffered another loss when his eldest son, Beau, died from a devastating form of cancer. He had pinned his hopes on Beau’s success in life and politics.
When the elder Biden was elected president in 2020, people overheard him saying, “This should have been Beau.”
The president’s political foes—including Trump—thought they could win public approval by attacking the surviving Biden son, Hunter, whose legal and life challenges have been complicated and multiplied by his battles with addiction.
Doubtless, there were political advisors who counseled Joe Biden to distance himself from his troubled son.
But the elder Biden refused to do so.
He also refused to use the power of his office to intervene, which would have been both illegal and unethical, as Hunter faced criminal charges.
He continued to love and embrace his son while he let that son face the consequences of his own bad choices.
It must have been hard to do.
Painful.
But it was the right thing.
When the president struggled to make the decision to leave the race, I felt for him.
I come from a world similar to the one in which Joe Biden grew up. I have no doubt that every fiber of his being told him not to walk away from this fight, not to give in … not to quit.
His mantra in the days following his debate debacle as the pressure mounted on him to withdraw—“when you get knocked down, you get back up”—struck a chord with me, as I suspect it did with many Americans.
Biden also had reason to feel aggrieved, even betrayed, by Democrats who abandoned him.
His presidency has been the most consequential in policy terms of any in the past half-century. He has gotten more done—reducing healthcare costs, guiding America successfully out of the COVID pandemic, rebuilding our infrastructure, resisting tyranny in Europe and the Middle East and growing our economy while also making it more equitable—in his four years in office than other presidents did in eight.
But Joe Biden put his personal grievances aside and did the right thing—the hard thing—for the good of the country.
This shouldn’t be a surprise.
When he sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, no opponent within the party criticized Biden as harshly as U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California.
Yet he chose Harris as his vice president.
And, four years later, he endorsed her as the person best qualified to succeed him.
Again, he did the right thing.
When Trump tries to talk about the great shape in which he left the country, Harris, a former prosecutor, will respond by asking what Trump liked best about America in January 2021.
The unemployment rate that was 250% higher than it is today?
The stock market that was half what it is now?
The COVID death rates that were four times higher than those of the rest of the industrial world?
Harris can make the case against Trump in a way Biden no longer can.
That’s what Joe Biden finally, ultimately, saw.
So, he did the hard thing.
The right thing.
Because that’s who he is.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Send comments to [email protected].
