Biden's Benediction

And our chance

One month ago, Joe Biden did something extraordinary. As the Democratic National Convention begins with his speech this evening, as the future he enabled presents itself, it is worth taking in the grandeur of his achievement.

When we read about politics, we are given the the petty things, the mean things.  No matter the greatness of an achievement, we will be served the gossip that brings everything down to earth.  But politics sometimes does include a moment of self-transcendence, such as the one we witnessed when Joe Biden ended his presidential campaign.

In retrospect, it is easy to reduce what he did to its details, or simply to forget about it.  After all, we are in a new moment now.  And although it is Kamala Harris and Tim Walz who are bringing the novelty and the hope, running the rapid campaign that could open a better future, behind it all is Joe Biden and his decision. 

There was nothing inevitable about what he did. 

President Biden had to resist the normal human temptation to stay in power.  The history of political thought teaches us that people who attain power wish to keep it.  And the president had every right to try to do so.  He was an incumbent who had secured what he needed to be the nominee of his party.  He was not yet rubbing against the constraints the Constitution.  He had to let go voluntarily.  Which he did.

The president also had to work against the consensus inside his own administration.  The Biden administration had some extraordinary achievements, for which it almost never gets enough credit.  The Biden team was loyal, and that loyalty sometimes became a kind of (understandable) defensiveness.  Facing criticism from the outside, much of it unfair, people closed ranks.  The president had to open himself, and listen.  This is no small thing.

He had to overcome his pride.  The president is a person who has faced personal tragedies and political setbacks.  He seems to define himself as someone who can take a punch and come back.  And this personality structure can be tremendously helpful.  The willingness to endure punishment and persevere is very often necessary.  To face a challenge and meet it in a different way than just fighting back is hard.  But that is what the president achieved.

Democracy is not an easy form of government.  It has none of the certainties of the various forms of tyranny.  It demands that the governed as well as the governing make compromises, learn to to listen, and sometimes resist impulses.  The champions of democracy are not the people who cling to power in its name, but those who put that greater consultation, that larger discussion, that continuing project, above themselves. 

The president has set an example. The president did exactly the thing that he needed to do. That is an example we can follow.

Joe Biden has given us a benediction.  The rest is up to us.