For Joe Biden, this decision to step aside is a stunning end to 50 years at the centre of power
In the White House and Senate, Joe Biden was a key protagonist in a half-century of wars, diplomacy and political battles during one of the longest and most consequential careers in modern American politics.
President Joe Biden’s decision to abandon his re-election campaign brings a stunning end to one of the longest and most consequential careers in modern American politics, one that has given him a central role in the nation’s affairs for more than a half century.
Biden announced in a letter posted to social media that while it had been his intention to seek a second term, “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
He said he would address the nation later in the week and backed Vice-President Kamala Harris to take over at the top of the ticket.
First elected to the Senate in 1972, at age 29, Biden served as a senator, vice-president and president in an era that spanned Richard Nixon’s resignation to the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first black president and Biden’s own White House victory over Donald Trump; from the end of the Vietnam war and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the rise of international terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As a senator, he presided over several US Supreme Court confirmation hearings, including the contentious confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas amid sexual harassment allegations, and as president named the first black woman to the high court. In the White House, he guided the nation through the Covid-19 pandemic and ordered a precipitous withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, ending America’s longest war.
Washington fixture
Throughout his career, Biden adopted a style of retail politics and behind-the-scenes dealmaking that in his presidency was often at odds with the frenzy and shrillness of today’s social media. Biden often said that “all politics is personal”, and used the power of personal relationships to accomplish many of his goals.
His decision to set aside re-election plans came almost a month after a disastrous performance in a debate with Trump that undercut his insistence that he was fit to serve a second term. Now, in bowing to the effects of old age, Biden, at 81, also ends a public career laced with human drama.
The move sets off a scramble within the Democratic Party to find a successor. Biden had won the party’s nomination convincingly in this year’s caucuses and primaries, and he was due to accept the nomination at its national convention within weeks.
In the White House and in his 36 years in the Senate, Biden forged a role as one of the Democratic Party’s top emissaries to middle-class Americans, regularly drawing on his roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the city of his birth, and Delaware, where his family moved when he was a boy.
Though Biden was a long-time fixture in Washington, he sought to maintain the image of an outsider. As a senator, he commuted daily from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, logging more than 3.2 million kilometres on Amtrak trains during his career. The train station in his hometown eventually was named after him.
Biden’s signature accomplishments in congress stemmed from his time as chairman of the foreign relations and judiciary committees. He led the legislative effort to pass the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, which funds shelters and aims to prevent domestic violence.
During his years on the national stage, Biden developed his share of critics, including over his work on a 1994 crime bill that, among other things, increased the number of crimes punishable by the death penalty, banned semiautomatic or assault weapons and lengthened prison sentences. The legislation gained broad support but was later viewed as having contributed to mass incarcerations, and the Obama White House pushed to undo some of those measures.
The confirmation hearings for Thomas turned into a televised showdown that put Biden at the centre of a dispute between the future justice and Anita Hill, the black law professor who accused Thomas of sexual harassment. Biden later said he was sorry about how Hill was treated by fellow senators during the hearings but didn’t think he had specifically “treated her badly” during the exchanges, in which Thomas denied any wrongdoing.
After voting for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Biden became an advocate for ending the war.
His son Beau Biden served in Iraq as a member of the Delaware National Guard.
A proud Irish Catholic from a working-class background, Biden had run twice for president unsuccessfully when Obama selected him in 2008 as his vice-presidential running mate, elevating the old-school senator within a party that had grown more liberal and far more diverse in its racial and ethnic makeup.
During Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, Biden expressed his support for same-sex marriage ahead of Obama’s plans to do the same and helped pass the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare health insurance act.
He oversaw the implementation of Obama’s controversial economic stimulus bill that was designed to address the recession following the financial crisis.
He also led the US engagement with Ukraine after Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and other acts of aggression there in 2014.
Across the course of the Obama administration, Biden demonstrated loyalty to the president as well as a willingness to offer dissenting opinions.
He was among a group of officials who advised the president against authorising the military operation that killed Osama bin Laden, suggesting in the White House Situation Room that US forces should “do another pass” to confirm bin Laden’s location, Biden said in early 2020 as a way to give the president space to make a decision. But Biden said he later told Obama privately in the Oval Office: “Mr President, follow your instincts, go.”
Biden long held presidential ambitions, but his first two campaigns for the White House ended in failure. After launching his first bid in the northern spring of 1987, he dropped out the following September after neglecting to credit passages of his closing statement in a debate to a British politician.
Running as an underdog in 2008 in a field that included fellow Democrats Obama and Hillary Clinton, Biden left the race after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses. But his strong performances during the primary debates and lengthy Senate record made an impression on Obama, who tapped Biden as his running mate in large part because as a first-term senator he needed a seasoned Washington politician who had foreign policy experience.
Biden also connected with white, middle-class voters Obama needed to win the election. Having only overlapped for four years in the Senate, the two didn’t know each other well and the partnership was awkward at first.
Biden’s tendency to be longwinded and have a penchant for gaffes clashed with Obama’s disciplined, cerebral style.
After serving two terms with Obama, Biden defeated a large field of younger and more liberal contenders to win the party’s presidential nomination in 2020 in an election heavily influenced by the coronavirus pandemic, going on to unseat president Trump and become the nation’s 46th President. Biden described himself as a bridge to a new generation of Democratic leaders and pointed to the need for more diversity. That was apparent in his selection of then senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate – his election made her the nation’s first woman and first black person to serve as vice-president.
Biden also made good on his promise to nominate the nation’s first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. He nominated and won confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in early 2022 after justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement.
Taking office two weeks after an attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, Biden cast his presidency as a reset for the nation and an attempt at unity following years of polarising politics.
“Politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war,” he said during his inaugural address.
Biden put the country’s re-emergence from the pandemic at the centre of his administration’s ambitious legislative agenda during his first year in office.
Signature legislation
He signed into law a $US1.9 trillion Covid relief plan that included direct payments to Americans and enhanced unemployment and child tax credits. He also enacted a $US1 trillion infrastructure law and in 2022, he signed into law a $US700bn climate, healthcare and tax bill and a $US280bn bill aimed at boosting US semiconductor manufacturing and competitiveness.
His administration made efforts to cancel student loan debt and protect abortion rights following the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned the landmark Roe v Wade decision and ended a constitutional right to abortion.
A swell of immigrants illegally crossing the border from Mexico presented another set of practical and political challenges, as many voters came to believe the President was insufficiently aggressive in stopping illegal immigration. In June, Biden signed a proclamation banning migrants who crossed the southern border illegally from claiming asylum, a last-resort effort meant to quell voter discontent.
Throughout his presidency, Biden faced questions about his ability to serve as President, due to his status as the oldest person to hold the office. Biden frequently said he remained healthy and was motivated by a potential rematch against Trump.
As the nation sought to move beyond the pandemic, the President also dealt with the challenge of high inflation, which reached levels not seen since the early 1980s. Before coming down, petrol prices surpassed $US1.30 a litre in parts of the country, putting the President on the defensive despite strong job growth, a roaring stockmarket and low unemployment.
Some independent economists said Biden’s Covid aid package partly contributed to the rise in inflation
Biden’s foreign policy record was headlined by his decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan in 2021 and by his efforts to rally allies the following year in support of Ukraine and the war in Gaza. His staunch support of Israel cost him support among some Democrats.
Biden had vowed to end the nation’s 20-year role in the war in Afghanistan as a candidate and those goals remained popular with the public. While more than 120,000 Afghans were evacuated, Biden’s administration was widely condemned for its chaotic execution of the withdrawal.
Biden sought to frame the US as a bulwark in the conflict between democracies and autocracies around the globe. That theme was central in the Biden administration’s dealings with China under President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Biden rallied NATO allies in defence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. Biden made frequent trips to Europe to consult with allies and encourage NATO’s expansion and larger security role across the continent.
Finland joined the alliance last year and Sweden has subsequently followed.
Biden lost his first wife, Neilia, and young daughter Naomi in a car accident just weeks after he won election to the Senate. His elder son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015 while Biden was serving as vice-president. In 1988, Biden underwent surgery for two life-threatening brain aneurisms.
‘A big heart’
Those personal tragedies became an essential part of his public persona. Biden remarried in 1977. He and his wife Jill had a daughter, Ashley.
Biden often would counsel friends and acquaintances who had suffered from the loss of loved ones, frequently telling them that someday the memory of that person would “bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eyes”. As President, Biden grappled with the legal issues involving his 54-year-old son Hunter, who was found guilty in June of falsely claiming to be drug-free when applying to buy a gun licence six years ago. The younger Biden, who was recovering from a drug addiction, became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of criminal charges.
Republicans also targeted Hunter’s overseas business dealings involving China and Ukraine. The President said repeatedly that neither he nor his son did anything wrong.
Biden’s administration was in many ways an extension of his eight years under Obama, with many of Biden’s top aides hailing from the previous administration.
“Joe, you are my brother,” Obama said of Biden in his 2015 eulogy of Beau. “And I’m grateful every day that you’ve got such a big heart, and a big soul, and those broad shoulders. I couldn’t admire you more.”
The Wall Street Journal
