Opinion | Biden should have given this speech a year ago

This is the speech President Joe Biden should have given a year ago.

In a barely 10-minute address to the nation from behind the Resolute Desk on Wednesday night, Biden put a bow on his decision to abandon his cratering re–election campaign.

Biden, still recovering from Covid, spoke haltingly and at times seemed to slur his words — sometimes repeating sentences with the words rearranged a bit. Even when he was boasting of his administration’s accomplishments, there was a mournful tenor in his voice. He looked exposed. 

But his appeals for unity amid ongoing attacks on our democracy didn’t ring hollow. He came off like a patriotic American who saw his predecessor unforgivably botch the early days of a pandemic and then try to overturn the results of a free and fair election. Biden, for all his baggage, understands the dangers on the horizon. 

Yes, he’s a career politician who ran for president three times. He’s always wanted this job and never wanted to give it up. But sitting in the Oval Office, surrounded by family and staff members, Biden didn’t look like a man defeated by an uprising within his own party. He looked like a man who finally accepted reality and who needs some rest. 

This is the correct outcome. And yet, when he recalled his promise to the American people to “always level with you … to tell the truth,” I couldn’t help but feel a bit gaslighted.

After what would prove to be a career-ending debate performance in June, it seemed that only Biden’s inner circle failed to understand there was no going back. There was no way to convincingly argue that Biden hadn’t lost a step — or many steps — and that he’d be just fine if he served another four years. 

Biden was never supposed to be an eight-year president. He was always supposed to be a “bridge” to the next generation. Though he never pledged to do it, during the 2020 election there were breadcrumbs of reporting in The New York Times and Politico that indicated Biden and top advisers were at least open to the idea of his serving just one term, then riding off into the sunset as the hero who dislodged Trump from the White House and leaving it to someone else to take the helm in four years.

If Biden had given this speech a year ago — telling members of his own party to vote for someone else and thanking Americans for their faith in him — he’d have done far less damage to his administration’s credibility, and he would have enabled a competitive primary process.  

He didn’t, so instead we’ve got a just-over-100-day presidential election the likes of which we’ve never seen before. 

It’d be a stretch to use President Gerald Ford’s famous post-Watergate line, “Our long national nightmare is over,” but the specter of an ailing, unpopular 81-year-old president trying to persuade the country — again — to vote for him instead of Trump was kind of a nightmare for a lot of Americans. And now it is in fact over. 

We’re at that bridge to the future now. Look at the other ticket, featuring a 78-year-old former president and a 39-year-old senator with less than two years of experience in office. Trump’s decision to pick Sen. JD Vance is MAGA’s passing of the torch. And if they win on Election Day, this country could be forever changed in a terrible way. 

We can’t know yet what will happen in November. But a few weeks ago, Biden seemed almost certainly on a path to a crushing defeat. Instead, his early exit means there is now a much better chance that his work can and will be continued — and his legacy not destroyed.