President Biden, Patriot

His Withdrawal Recalls Washington’s Farewell and His Party Lives Up To Its Name

by Bryan H. Wildenthal (August 10, 2024)

(See Copyright & Permissions Note on Vita & Contact page.)

The President of the United States was elected as a unifying grandfatherly figure. But the country remained bitterly divided nonetheless. The divisions were shockingly vituperative and extreme, going beyond ordinary political disagreements.

Each major political faction viewed (or claimed to view) the other as a threat to national security or the constitutional order or both. The divisions focused in part on a war between European powers — a conflict between a nascent democracy and an older authoritarian empire.

Many Americans believed the aging president no longer had the mental capacity to actually call the shots and direct administration policy. They thought he must be the dupe of sinister underlings and lieutenants. Others gave him credit for his actual astute judgment and wise leadership built on decades of experience.

Some Americans fervently wanted the president to seek and win another term in office. Others feared he would continue to be used, as they saw it, to advance a dangerous agenda.

The president was under tremendous political and personal pressure. He was struggling with the effects of advancing age.

He faced a painful political and personal decision: Should he seek another term or step aside and pass the torch to a younger leader?

The foregoing describes President Biden’s dilemma on July 21, 2024. But few have noted how strikingly it also captures the situation in the 1790s confronting our very first President — George Washington.

President Biden is a patriot, just as President Washington was. Any fairminded observer of Biden’s 50-plus years in public service already knew that before July 21, 2024.

But for those who had any doubt, he emphatically proved it with his stunning letter to the nation on that day.

He put his country first.

That was underscored three days later in his concisely eloquent address from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. The heart and soul of Joe Biden were captured in these words in that speech:

“America is an idea — an idea stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It’s the most powerful idea in the history of the world.”

“That idea is that we hold these truths to be self-evident: We’re all created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty, [and] the pursuit of happiness.”

“We’ve never fully lived up [to that] idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either. And I do not believe the American people will walk away from it now.”

Historical Comparisons to Truman and Johnson

Some have suggested the best historical analogies to President Biden’s withdrawal are the decisions to stand down by Presidents Harry S. Truman in 1952 and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968.

All three Democratic presidents struggled with low popularity and the issue of American involvement in foreign wars: the Korean War in Truman’s case, the Vietnam War for Johnson — and for Biden, the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

But the Truman and Johnson comparisons don’t hold up well. For my main sources and background on the following discussion, see Robert J. Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949–53 (1982) (pp. 392–401), David McCullough, Truman (1992) (pp. 837, 887–94, 903–08, 914), and Robert Dallek, Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (2004) (pp. 323–32).

Truman had already served almost two full terms by 1952. The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, limits presidents to being elected twice. It further provides that a president who succeeds to the office, and serves more than two years of a term to which someone else was elected, may be elected only once, as Truman was in 1948. As vice president, Truman took office upon the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, only three months into FDR’s final term, so Truman served a total of seven years and nine months.

The 22nd Amendment expressly exempted the president holding office when it was proposed. So Truman was technically eligible to run again in 1952. But he never really wanted to. Doing so would have violated the consensus reflected by the amendment in favor of restoring the traditional two-term limit, after FDR’s unprecedented four elections to the office.

By early 1952 Truman favored the eventual Democratic nominee, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson. But he was frustrated by Stevenson’s hesitance. Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, a crusading reformer, won the New Hampshire primary in March 1952, his first in a series of Democratic primary victories. Truman’s name had been placed on the ballot without his prior approval but he never campaigned and formally bowed out on March 29, 1952.

Political bosses and the party machine, and the influence of the incumbent president, were more important at that time than primaries or caucuses. Kefauver failed to win a majority of the delegates at the Democratic convention. With Truman’s support, the convention drafted the reluctant Stevenson, who went on to lose badly to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

President Johnson’s predicament in 1968 was remarkably similar. Like Truman, he had been vice president, inheriting the White House in November 1963 upon the assassination of his predecessor, President John F. Kennedy. Johnson was then elected in his own right in 1964, just as Truman was in 1948. Since LBJ had served only one year and two months of JFK’s term, he could have run again in 1968 in compliance with the 22nd Amendment.

But LBJ in 1967–68, just like Truman in 1951–52, was saddled with a bloody and stalemated land war in East Asia. LBJ was ambivalent for another reason. He had suffered a major heart attack years before, had other health problems, and feared he would not survive another term.

In another striking similarity to Truman, LBJ was challenged in the March 1968 New Hampshire primary. Johnson’s name wasn’t even on the ballot but his supporters waged a write-in campaign. Polls suggested he would win by a landslide but the nation was stunned when he prevailed by only 49–42% over Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, a liberal opponent of his Vietnam policy (not to be confused with, and no relation to, far-right Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who was in office 1947–57).

In quick succession, JFK’s brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, then jumped into the presidential race. LBJ’s surprise decision to drop any effort at reelection was announced on March 31, 1968, sixteen years and two days after Truman’s withdrawal.

RFK was assassinated in June 1968. Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination and was narrowly defeated by President Richard Nixon. LBJ retired to his ranch in Texas and died of a heart attack in 1973, two days after his final term would have ended had he run and won. The stresses of the presidency surely would have done him in far sooner if he had.

Given that Humphrey came amazingly close to defeating Nixon in the three-way race — with a rightwing racist independent candidate, former Governor George Wallace of Alabama, winning 13% of the vote, mainly at Nixon’s expense — one has to wonder if LBJ might have won after all if he had run. His and Humphrey’s public positions on Vietnam were not very different.

LBJ might have had broader appeal to Southerners and centrist voters across the country than Humphrey the liberal Minnesotan — though Humphrey carried LBJ’s home state of Texas by a narrow plurality, even without him, and came tantalizingly close to winning Nixon’s home state of California too. LBJ might well have been a more ruthless and effective campaigner against Nixon.

If so, a reelected Vice President Humphrey might have become president anyway if a reelected LBJ had died in office before 1973 (as seems likely). Humphrey, a brilliant and visionary liberal idealist, might then have won election in 1972 (Ronald Reagan would have been his likely Republican opponent). He was diagnosed with cancer in 1977 and died in 1978.

American history could have been very different.

President Biden in July 2024 was, in many ways, in a stronger position than either Truman in March 1952 or Johnson in March 1968. It was four months later in the year. Far from being defeated or struggling in the primaries, Biden had swept them and had the nearly unanimous support of elected delegates scheduled to meet at the August convention.

Biden’s approval rating had been weak for several years, hovering around 40%, sometimes descending into the high 30s. But Democratic voters, despite widespread concerns about his age, were largely united behind him (however reluctantly).

Biden’s popularity was damaged by post-Covid inflation, but that subsided by the end of 2023. Unemployment and crime were at historic lows. Jobs, wages, and the overall economy were growing.

Biden enjoyed remarkable success pushing major legislation through a closely divided Congress, including infrastructure investments long promised but never delivered by former President Trump.

Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan also damaged his popularity but did not divide the country. He was, again, merely fulfilling a promise Trump himself made but failed to keep as president.

Biden’s skillful rallying and expansion of the NATO alliance, helping Ukraine sustain its independence when almost everyone thought it would quickly fall to Russian aggression, stands in sharp contrast to the fumbling setbacks of Truman and Johnson in Korea and Vietnam. Unlike them, Biden avoided committing U.S. troops. Indeed, he could boast that no American soldiers were at war anywhere in the world.

By contrast, with thousands of soldiers dying in Korea and saddled by various controversies, Truman’s approval hit rock-bottom at 26% in March 1951. Only Nixon during Watergate ever saw comparably low presidential approval ratings (modern opinion polling did not exist before the 1930s). Truman’s standing improved by December 1952, near the end of his term — to a mere 32%!

In March 1968, LBJ’s approval rating was only 36%, with only 26% approving his handling of Vietnam, where Americans were again fighting and dying, in a cause far less clear and justified than Korea.

Historical Parallels to George Washington

For the best and most telling parallels to President Biden’s decision we must reach back more than 230 years — more than 150 years before Truman’s presidency — to the time of America’s first president.

The best account of President Washington’s time in office is provided by Ron Chernow’s definitive biography, Washington: A Life (2010) (source of all following page citations). Chernow is most famous as author of the acclaimed biography Alexander Hamilton (2004), the inspiration and basis for the innovative 2015 musical.

Many will scoff at my suggested comparison. They will argue that Biden merely made a virtue of necessity. They will try to discount his sacrifice and his patriotism by arguing that he was under enormous pressure and didn’t really have much choice.

By contrast, they may argue, President Washington could have stayed on as long as he liked, even for life. Instead of being forced out after one term like Biden, they will argue, Washington made the historic decision to voluntarily step aside after two terms.

In so doing, Washington established a tradition from which no president until FDR, more than 140 years later, dared to depart by seeking a third term. And in response, within seven years after FDR won a fourth term, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, limiting all future presidents to two terms.

I certainly do not purport to equate Presidents Washington and Biden. Washington might well have been able to crown himself king if he had wanted to — or to assume power as military dictator in the manner of Caesar, Cromwell, or Napoleon. And he could have done that in the 1780s after successfully leading the nation to independence as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. He had no need to wait for his presidency, which ran from 1789 to 1797 following the ratification of the Constitution, the framing of which at the 1787 Constitutional Convention was also presided over by Washington.

But the idea that Washington made a fully voluntary decision not to run again in the 1796 election does not hold up to scrutiny.

There are actually many strong and fascinating parallels with Biden’s presidency and Biden’s decision to stand down — to the credit of the selfless modesty of both men as leaders.

Washington, like Biden, labored under great political and personal pressures and struggled with age-related health issues (pp. 582, 624–28, 674–83, 752–58).

Washington never wanted to become king or dictator and Americans would have strongly resisted any such pretensions. Claims that he showed royal pretensions as president were vicious and nonsensical slanders cooked up by his political enemies. Americans had just fought a bloody revolution, after all, to be free of a distant royal tyrant.

But Washington was more than willing to serve as president and he relished the stature and power of the office. As Chernow and other historians have noted, there is no evidence he ever set out to limit himself to two terms. If political circumstances and his own health had allowed, he might very well have served a third and even fourth term.

This is not to minimize the ultimate choice that President Washington made and its salutary influence on later presidents. His decision was undoubtedly noble, patriotic, and very much in keeping with his commitment to selfless public service.

By the same token, we should not minimize the ultimate choice that President Biden made. Dare we hope it will have a similar influence on future presidents?

Washington was only 64 in 1796, and — if he had lived — would only have been 69 at the end of a third term and 73 at the end of a fourth in 1805. As it happened, he died in late 1799 of a sudden and unexpected illness (apparently an acute throat infection), less than three years after leaving office (pp. 805–09). Yes, life expectancies were lower then, but Thomas Jefferson lived to age 83, Benjamin Franklin to 84, and John Adams to 90.

Washington came close to stepping down after a single term, just as Biden has chosen to do. Washington’s original plan and desire was to do exactly that (pp. 674–83). Indeed, he was still wavering about whether to seek a second term as late as October 1792 (p. 682). The election season was much shorter then and once Washington decided to run again he faced no opposition.

Age was already taking its toll on Washington as he began his first term in 1789. Descriptions by contemporaries reveal eerie similarities to Biden’s travails.

By 1791 (p. 582), “Washington had clearly undergone a startling change. Described as ‘lusty’ … in 1785, he was now slow and shuffling. Instead of being ruddy with buoyant health, he was gaunt and ‘cadaverous’.” His “voice was … described as thin and whispery. An unaccustomed stiffness had overtaken his movements ….”

In 1789 an infected tumor in one leg left Washington bedridden for weeks (pp. 586–88). In the spring of 1790, shortly after Benjamin Franklin died (p. 624), “Washington very nearly followed Franklin to his grave.” He developed severe pneumonia (pp. 625–26). While his powerful physical constitution eventually enabled him to rally back to health, he was unable to perform his presidential duties for several weeks. Today such an illness would require invocation of the 25th Amendment.

Both of Washington’s terms as president were overshadowed by the French Revolution and its increasingly bloody excesses (pp. 656–61, 687–99, 714–15). The danger to America was that the revolution developed into a military conflict between France, the deeply flawed and struggling new democracy, and imperial Britain, America’s former colonial ruler.

The United States was at high risk of being dragged into the conflict. France, before the revolution, had provided absolutely critical aid to America’s fight for independence, but now joined Britain in bullying the new nation on the high seas.

The French Revolution and related conflicts deeply poisoned America’s domestic politics. Washington’s strongest supporters, fashioning themselves as “Federalists,” viewed with suspicion the “Democratic-Republicans” associated with Jefferson, his friend James Madison (now a member of Congress), and others who were openly sympathetic to the French revolutionaries.

The Jeffersonians, in turn, viewed Washington’s powerful Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, as a dangerous Anglophile whom they speciously accused of monarchical tendencies. In fairness, Hamilton did view Britain as a more important and preferable long-term ally of the United States, though he and Washington maintained a healthy distrust of their former colonial rulers.

Each faction viewed the other as not merely wrong on the issues but as treasonous and dangerous to America’s national security and its infant constitutional order.

The fact that Washington brought Jefferson into his cabinet, as Secretary of State, did not (sadly) promote national unity. Instead, Jefferson, Hamilton, and other members of Washington’s brilliant and headstrong “team of rivals” feuded endlessly among themselves. As Chernow chronicles at length, Jefferson and Madison, despite their revered status today as “Founding Fathers,” behaved toward Washington and Hamilton as remarkably duplicitous backstabbers.

If you think relations today between President Biden and “MAGA” Republicans are poisonously tense, read Chernow! The political atmosphere during Washington’s time was astonishingly nasty and unhinged (see, e.g., pp. 764–65, 768–69).

“[T]he vicious cabinet infighting was tearing [President] Washington apart. No sooner had he agreed to serve a second term than he regretted it. He was staggered by the rabid abuse spewed out by the Republican [i.e., Jeffersonian ‘Democratic-Republican’] press” (p. 696).

Washington would not have been the least bit surprised to contemplate Fox News today. As Chernow notes (p. 696): “During his presidency, many newspapers had gone from being staid and neutral to being organs of party politics and propaganda.”

By 1796, as Washington considered whether to seek a third term or finally retire, his age-related physical decline bore heavily on him, along with the relentless political conflicts that threatened to tear the country apart. He “now firmly resolved to leave office” (p. 752). Some Federalists begged him to stay longer but the pressures he faced had become too overwhelming. He asked Hamilton to draft his famous Farewell Address (pp. 752–58).

In another striking similarity to President Biden’s predicament today, “some observers attributed [Washington’s] departure to his dread of a poor showing in the fall election” (p. 757). His own vice president, John Adams (another Founding Father who does not come off that well in Chernow’s telling), sniped that “you may depend upon it, [Washington’s] retirement was not voluntary.”

This resentful comment by Vice President Adams, who succeeded Washington as president, was clearly tainted by envy. But there was much truth in it. Washington did not simply walk away from power in a noble gesture of self-abasement. It was a complex political and personal decision reached under the influence of powerful intersecting pressures.

In other words, it appears to have been very much like the complex political and personal decision that President Biden finally arrived at on July 21, 2024.

This does not reflect any cynical or dismissive view by Chernow — nor by me — of Washington’s decision. The comparison, in my view, is to Biden’s credit, not Washington’s detriment.

Chernow’s staggering scholarship and penetrating insights persuade me that Washington was a far more complex, fascinating, and admirable leader and person than my previous impressions had led me to think. See Chernow’s brilliant overviews of Washington’s achievements (pp. 602–03, 770–71).

Chernow also, to be sure, gives ample attention to Washington’s tragically flawed history as a slaveholder — though at the end of his life he made a bold effort to atone for his complicity in that evil institution (pp. 622–24, 636–41, 709–10, 750–51, 758–63, 799–803, 815–16).

I highly recommend the Chernow biography. It is a vivid and gripping account of the single most important and influential leader in American history (perhaps Abraham Lincoln merits equivalent billing).

You may, like me, feel struck to the very heart by Chernow’s eloquent summation of Washington’s legacy (p. 812), especially the final sentence quoted here (my emphasis):

“History records few examples of a leader who so earnestly wanted to do the right thing, not just for himself but for his country. Avoiding moral shortcuts, he consistently upheld such high ethical standards that he seemed larger than any other figure on the political scene. Again and again the American people … entrusted him with power, secure in the knowledge that he would exercise it fairly and ably and surrender it when his term of office was up.”

Chernow published those words a decade before January 6, 2021. Pause and think about it. Should we not hang our heads in shame — as a nation — to think of the morally small and self-obsessed man we somehow chose to succeed Washington as the 45th president on January 20, 2017?

An Act of Pure Patriotism

I say without embarrassment that I got choked up with tears several times on July 21 (and occasionally since), contemplating what President Biden did that day and what it means.

Yes, of course, he was under pressure — tremendous pressure — and there were practical and political considerations that played an important role.

No fair-minded person can deny what a painful and difficult decision this must have been for the president, to give up a campaign he was convinced he could win and a second term he justly believed he had earned.

Should he give up power, subordinate his own pride and ambition, and defer to a younger and far less experienced political partner and successor in the face of legitimate questions about whether she was ready for the task?

The president could easily have delayed and obstructed and run out the clock and placed his own pride and power first. Other presidents have done so. The office brings with it a great deal of power — to a frightening degree in our nuclear age.

The Democratic Party, even on July 21, more than three weeks after the president’s disastrous debate performance on June 27, remained deeply divided. Many Democrats continued to stand loyally by him, deeply mistaken in my respectful view.

This was a decision he needed to make and he should have made it much sooner. But hindsight is always 20/20. When it came to the crunch, he showed a level of selfless wisdom and patriotism that stunned even supportive critics like me.

President Biden voluntarily stepped aside, gave up power, passed the torch, and put his country first. Frank Bruni captured some of the enormity of the president’s action in his commentary that day.

At its core this was a stunningly patriotic act.

A Defining Contrast Between Two Men

Can anyone honestly imagine former President Trump doing what President Biden did? The question answers itself.

But if there were any doubt, Trump himself has also answered it, making it hilariously but also disturbingly clear that he simply cannot wrap his head around Biden’s decision.

It deeply rattles Trump that rank-and-file Democratic voters led the charge in pressing Biden to step aside. That reminds Trump of what the voters did to him in 2020.

Trump knows perfectly well he lost that election. His dishonest election denialism merely reflects his trademark refusal to publicly admit any weakness or defeat (update: see this recent article documenting this). His actions after losing in 2020 show us exactly what he will always do when faced with a choice between putting his country first or putting himself ahead of anyone or anything else.

Trump is a deeply insecure and immature man with a sadly and pathetically stunted personality.

President Biden, by stark contrast, is a profoundly mature and confident man, utterly secure and comfortable in his own skin.

A Defining Contrast Between Two Parties

In addition to putting his country first, President Biden put his party’s cause first. I don’t mean that in any narrow political sense of simply prioritizing the defeat of the opposing party. Rather, he placed the highest priority on the greatest and most noble ideals the Democratic Party is now defending.

Let me be clear. I would never claim the Democratic Party (which happens to be my own party) is right on every issue. I myself disagree with my party on many ordinary political and policy issues and I fully concede there are reasonable grounds to disagree on many others (though I think it has the better argument on most).

My point is that the Democratic Party, for all its flaws, mistakes, and biases, is now the only major party still defending basic American values of democracy, decency, truth, honesty, and the rule of law.

I don’t say that to boast and I honestly take no partisan satisfaction (certainly no joy) in noting this obvious fact. It is actually terrifying to think about.

It is terrifying because it acknowledges a disturbing reality: that the other major party in our political system has gone off the rails and poses a clear and present danger to our country and the future of our people.

No patriotic American would want that to be true.

I do not want it to be true. I hate to publish it or say it out loud. Like many Americans, I’m deeply tempted to delude myself that somehow it is not true.

But tragically — and terrifyingly — it IS true.

We can only hope enough American voters see that and vote like the future of our country depends on it. Because it does.

Ezra Klein, one of the most thoughtful and perceptive political and social commentators writing today, captured very succinctly in his July 23 podcast the basic difference between the Democratic and Republican parties today.

After the June 27 presidential debate, Klein asked himself “whether the Democratic Party was still a true political party, an organization dedicated to values and ideas that transcended any one leader, or whether it had, like the Republican Party before it, been corrupted into a vehicle for one man’s ambitions and resentments.”

As Klein noted (my emphasis), in the wake of the Republican convention on July 15–18 and President Biden’s withdrawal on July 21: “Now we have our answer. The Republican Party is a personality cult run by the dear leader’s daughter-in-law. The Democratic Party is a political party.”

As Klein also tellingly wrote, the Democrats are “a political party that wants to win.” Because most Democrats remain rational and fact-based voters, not hyperpartisan cultists, Biden’s distressing debate performance on June 27 shocked them into a fundamental change of view — and into action.

Confronted by a leader they almost universally respected and even loved, who appeared to be faltering, huge numbers of Democrats — from rank-and-file voters to prominent activists, opinion leaders, and officeholders — began doggedly (even fiercely) urging the president to step aside and pass the torch.

Confronted with the evidence, Democrats increasingly concluded between June 27 and July 21 that President Biden was no longer capable of waging a successful campaign for reelection. To be very clear, most of these friendly critics, myself included, believed and still do that he remains fully capable of discharging the duties of his office through the end of his term. But leading an articulate and vigorous political campaign, with the grueling travel schedule required, is a very different matter.

As no one can honestly deny, it is utterly impossible to imagine any significant number of Republican voters or officeholders mounting any comparable fact-based challenge to Trump.

Trump remains as manifestly unfit for office as he has been for years, but even more so with the passage of time. He is conducting an astonishingly lazy, dishonest, reckless, undisciplined, and self-indulgent campaign.

And this is nothing new! He did the same thing in 2020, torpedoing his own reelection chances in a campaign many political pundits (even Democrats) think he could easily have won if he had just kept his mouth shut more often and acted more presidential.

Out of office, Trump continued to whine incessantly about his loss, falsely claiming victory was stolen from him. He was largely responsible for sabotaging Republican efforts in the 2022 midterm elections, causing them to lose key governorships and Senate seats (failing to regain control of that body), and to only barely regain control of the House of Representatives when they were predicted to win by a landslide.

In the current campaign, Trump selected a blatantly unqualified vice-presidential nominee: a light-weight extremist whose main appeal (for Trump) appears to be boot-licking endorsement of Trump’s election lies and who does nothing to enhance Trump’s appeal to swing voters (update: see my October 11 essay on J.D. Vance). Yet Trump’s partisan base stands by him with fervent cult-like devotion.

As Klein summed up (my emphasis): “What President Biden did on [July 21] — that is what it looks like to put country first. What the Democratic Party did over the past few weeks — that is [also] what it looks like to put country first.”

The Republican Party, as Klein noted, has become an authoritarian cult that worships its leader. By contrast, the polestar for the Democratic Party is not any particular leader, not even a beloved incumbent President of the United States. It is … democracy.

The Democratic Party is … democratic. It is emphatically living up to its name.

The problem, of course, is that many of our fellow citizens and voters are sincerely convinced the future of the country depends on voting for Trump. They are wrong but we have to recognize their sincerity. Some of them are literally my neighbors. Some may be yours. Many of us have friends, colleagues, or family members who do not get it.

As I commented in my essay posted July 15:

“The extremists among Trump’s supporters, and there are many, pose grave concerns. But those of us who oppose Trump should always keep in mind that most of his supporters are not extremists nor ill-intentioned but rather (in my view) mistaken people of good will. Our goal must be to persuade people to vote against Trump.”

I was and remain “mindful of President Biden’s admonition in his address to the nation [on July 14], ‘to remember, while we may disagree, we are not enemies. We’re neighbors.’ The president was surely inspired by the simple eloquence of the first Republican president, facing far worse divisions: ‘We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.’ But we must also confront reality. We must confront the truth.”

A Defining Choice

The truth is that both Trump and Vance are profoundly dangerous threats to American democracy and our constitutional form of government.

A patriotic Republican president and profoundly decent man, Ronald Reagan, once said: “Those are the facts, and as John Adams said, ‘Facts are stubborn things‘.”

My fellow Democrats love to tease President Reagan for his malapropism in that speech, saying facts are “stupid” things, but that only happened on the fourth of his six repetitions of the bluntly eloquent words of President Adams. Quoted above is Reagan’s first restatement of those words. The repetition may have tangled him up a bit (and he was probably struggling with early Alzheimer’s by that time).

President Reagan, in his typically fine style, corrected himself in the moment on that fourth repetition to appreciative laughter from his audience at the Republican National Convention on August 15, 1988 — as he passed the torch to his vice president and successor, President George H.W. Bush.

President Biden has now passed the torch as nominee of his party to his own vice president and he hopes to pass it to her on January 20, 2025, as his successor.

I know who has earned my vote. I hope you also vote like your future depends on it. Meanwhile, if you have the time, I urge you to read some American history. We’ve faced worse trials in the past. We can face and overcome this one too.

That history teaches me that President Joe Biden, in the long run, will enjoy the same favorable verdict history has bestowed upon President George Washington. Not to equate them. Biden will not join Washington, Lincoln, or Franklin D. Roosevelt among our greatest presidents. But he may aspire to the larger category of “near-great” presidents.

My point is simply this: Both men, Washington and Biden, late in life, brought to bear a lifetime of experience to serve as president to the best of their abilities.

Both, faced with temptations and pressures to seek another term, and pressures to step aside, chose the more selfless course, the patriotic course.

Both put our country first. You can’t ask much more than that.