CHICAGO (AP) – Sixteen years ago, a victorious Joe Biden spoke to an adoring crowd at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, his smile beaming with confidence in the country’s future and his own journey.
The soon-to-be vice president hugged his son Beau. He talked about how his own parents had given him strength and resilience.
“Master, when you get knocked down, get up,” he recalled his father, Joe, saying. Biden then repeated a lesson his mother, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden, taught him, who was sitting in the audience: “Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.”
In 2024, Biden did not have to reconcile the failure of his presidency. He compiled a list of notable achievements that will be visible for years. But he decided to drop his campaign under pressure from Democratic leaders, a significant concession to the passage of time when his party allies and a clear majority of US adults decided the 81-year-old should not seek re-election. After Biden decided to leave the presidential race, his party not only forgave him, but was praised by its leaders.
So Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. arrives at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week both honored and resigned.
Biden had solidified his party’s support and had no serious challenger. But that support crumbled after a disastrous debate in June, when her weaknesses were relentlessly exposed in public, reinforcing her biggest liability – that at her age she may no longer be fit for the job.
In Chicago, Biden is determined to stand up and show the difference between being sidelined and being shut down. His vice president, Kamala Harris, is now in the spotlight as a candidate. For the president, it is the latest in a life marked by cycles of loss and recovery.
“Wonderful things have happened to him and terrible things have happened to him,” said Ted Kaufman, his friend, former aide and appointed successor in the Delaware Senate.
This story is based on interviews with aides, colleagues and those who have worked with Biden over half a century in politics.
Biden entered the White House hoping that a focus on the common good could help heal the partisan malaise created by the rise of former President Donald Trump, now the Republican nominee again.
No one disputed the ego required to run the White House. However, the interviewees emphasized that Biden sees his legacy more as a leader who, in a cynical era, was able to demonstrate that government was a force for good.
“It’s less about him,” said Stefanie Feldman, assistant to the president and White House staff secretary. “He wants people to understand that the federal government delivers.”
Biden spent decades in the Senate crafting a bipartisan infrastructure deal. He signed into law far-reaching investments in advanced technologies and brokered a debt deal with Republicans to avoid a catastrophic default. Biden emphasized last week that he had reduced the prices of 10 of Medicare’s most expensive prescription drugs.
He also helped restore the faith of longtime allies that the United States could be an unwavering partner, and led efforts to provide much-needed support for Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression and counter China’s rise.
He covered the pandemic, inflation, immigration challenges, a broken supply chain and the troubled withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“The experience that he brought to the job — there’s no question — gave him the ability to accomplish things that no one thought he could accomplish,” said Anita Dunn, who worked as a senior advisor. “However, it’s not just experience. It’s relationships. It’s understanding how Congress works and how to bring members of Congress in to get things done.”
But what Americans kept seeing was not accumulated wisdom, but stiff-legged, shuffling steps and verbal struggles.
Biden was born too early to be a baby boomer, and the arc of his political career has been filled with notable successes and stunning defeats. He was elected to the Senate from Delaware at the age of 29, but lost his wife and daughter in a car accident. He found a new partner in Jill and ran for president during 1988, but withdrew after reports of plagiarism. He then dealt with serious health issues and survived two strokes.
His 2008 presidential campaign was a drug bust, but he became President Barack Obama’s trusted No. 2. Then Beau died of brain cancer and his other son, Hunter, succumbed to drug addiction. In a long shot, Biden won the Democratic nomination in 2020 and then defeated Trump, but his party wanted someone else to run against his predecessor this year.
Aides has recalled that Biden was told years earlier that China’s economic growth would be positive because it would lower prices for consumers, even if it meant that more production would move abroad. “If it helps the consumer and hurts the worker, we have a problem,” Biden told them at the time.
Biden was so focused on middle-class jobs that he found his presidency, ironically, defined by the public’s desire for lower prices. Inflation was a symptom of the global disruptions caused by the pandemic and war, as well as government spending aimed at stabilizing workers’ economies, which helped spur historic hiring.
The hard logic is that Biden is anchoring his presidency with an eye on what America could be like a decade from now.
While he personally believed he could beat Trump, a potential defeat carried the risk that his tax breaks, which were designed to shift the country away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and electric vehicles, could be lost.
A loss would mean the possibility of deeper tax cuts for the wealthy and companies. Trump’s return to the White House could mean dismantling the alliances rebuilt by Biden.
Although Biden had retired from politics in 2020 because he saw Trump’s movement as a threat to democracy, the former president remained a crucial figure in American politics. Trump had engendered deep loyalty from many voters, who made their opposition to Biden visible through protests he saw from the president’s limousine.
“This may be the biggest unfinished business of his administration,” Dunn said. “He’s raised the issue so that it’s a concern for voters, which is ultimately how democracies deal with it.”
Biden had told voters he needed a second term to “finish the job.” But a president’s work is never really done, a lesson made clear by some of the portraits of other presidents Biden displayed in the Oval Office.
George Washington served two terms, leaving a country in its infancy full of potential and danger. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated before he could win peace after the Civil War ended. Franklin D. Roosevelt never saw victory in World War II.
Unlike Lyndon Johnson in 1968, an unpopular war and violence on America’s streets did not derail Biden’s hopes for a second term. Unlike Harry Truman in 1952, he was not brought down by a primary challenge.
But in retirement, Biden may have another burst of happiness to see the future his four years as president helped create.
