2024-07-25 14:18:01
In a rare televised address from the Oval Office on Wednesday night, the US president touted his achievements.
He spoke of his humble roots. He praised the American people. He said the future of American democracy is in their hands. What Mr. Biden did not do, although he promised the Americans to always remain at their level, was not to directly answer the most important question.
He didn’t say why he became the first modern president to decline re-election just months before voting began.
And precisely these reasons will be what historians and political scientists will try to reveal.
He hinted at it, but he didn’t answer the question openly. The American people were left to read between the lines.
“In recent weeks,” Mr. Biden said, “it has become clear to me that I have to unite my party.”
He then repeated what has become an increasingly common refrain among Democrats, that it is time to “pass the torch” to a new generation.
While the US president said his achievements, which he listed in detail, deserved a second term, he added that “nothing can stand in the way of preserving our democracy, including personal ambitions.”
The cold, hard reality that he resigned as it became increasingly clear that he would lose to Donald Trump in November was glossed over. And it’s a result that his party members universally regard as catastrophic.
Trailing Trump in the polls, embarrassed by his woeful debate performance and with many Democrats increasingly calling for him to step down, there was no clear path to victory for Biden. Although the president did not say it, his former rival D. Trump understood it.
At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, hours before his address, Trump said Biden dropped out because he lost badly.
He then launched an attack on Kamala Harris, the new candidate, claiming she is a “radical left-wing lunatic” and the “ultraliberal driving force behind every one of Biden’s disasters.”
Republican groups flooded the airwaves in key battleground states, trying to define Harris in their own words, not hers. According to research by the Associated Press, Trump’s side plans to spend significantly more than his rivals in the election next month.
One ad said Harris helped cover up Biden’s “obvious mental decline.”
Mr. Biden’s speech on national television was a perfect opportunity to counter the attacks on his vice president and make a strong case that he can continue to serve as president. It was an opportunity he almost missed, according to the BBC.
Mr. Biden mentioned his candidate only at the end of the speech. He said Harris is “experienced, tough, capable” and “an incredible partner for me and the leader of our country.”
They were strong words, but they weren’t many. He spent more time discussing Benjamin Franklin than his vice president, the person he endorsed Sunday and who will be the primary torchbearer for his legacy in the coming months.
Unable to rely on the president, Harris and her team will have to decide in the coming days whether and how to respond to Republican attacks.
Mr. Biden may have another chance to praise his running mate at the Democratic convention in Chicago next month, but this is a delicate time for the new presumptive as her campaign is just starting to take off and Americans are still getting to know her.
The President of the United States may not have been comfortable being too political in this Oval Office speech. But if he worries about his own legacy, Harris’s success or failure, more important than anything he does from now on, the British broadcaster says, it will determine whether history sees him as someone who made a noble sacrifice or someone who risked his party. selfishly clinging to power for too long.
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2024-07-25 14:18:01