Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., who spent decades pursuing the White House before becoming the 46th U.S. president in the twilight of his career, took the stage in Chicago on Monday night to partake in the very public choreography of letting go.
The Democratic National Convention was originally meant to be Biden’s, with the event’s most important pageantry and messaging reserved for him. His disastrous debate with Donald Trump in late June changed all of that, forcing him to eventually leave this year’s presidential race. Now he is the opening act in a dramatic, hastily assembled and uncertain bit of political theater that will conclude Thursday night when Vice President Kamala Harris is formally anointed as his possible successor.
Biden resisted passing the baton in the first chaotic weeks after the debate, and he almost waited too long to step aside. It took shoves, from Rep. Nancy Pelosi among others, and a recognition of the damage he was inflicting on down-ballot Democrats, to move him along. Still, he moved. And Biden’s departure offers lessons in realpolitik that public servants and voters alike would do well to absorb.
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