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Will Biden be
remembered as American democracy’s savior or a midwife to its ruin?
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By Frank Bruni |
President Joe Biden’s record is his
record, and history can’t overwrite it. During his years in the White House, he
signed major pieces of legislation regarding
economic stimulus, infrastructure, clean
energy, gun safety, the
American semiconductor industry, marriage equality and
more. They were not foregone conclusions. They have brightened many Americans’
futures. He’ll be remembered admiringly for that.
But his legacy all in all hinges on
Nov. 5. If Vice President Kamala Harris beats Donald Trump, Biden is golden —
not just forgiven for his long delay and fierce reluctance before giving up on
a second term but also lionized for letting go of that dream.
If Trump wins, Biden will face a much
different judgment.
All of us who recognize the danger and
depravity of Trump are on tenterhooks, and all of us will suffer, as a country,
if he returns to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But Biden’s stake in this election
is singular, and that’s not even factoring in Trump’s sinister and chillingly
undemocratic pledge to sic federal investigators and prosecutors on Biden and
his family.
The historical anomaly of how Harris
emerged as the Democratic presidential nominee and the unusually hurried,
compressed nature of her campaign are the direct result of Biden’s initial
insistence, despite voters’ clear concerns about his age and vigor, on running
for re-election, and of his persistence for more than three weeks after his
disastrous performance in a debate with Trump in June.
By the time he dropped out of the race
on July 21, three days after the end of the Republican National Convention and
less than a month before the beginning of the Democratic National Convention,
there was no real opportunity for any mini-primary to determine his
replacement. No way to see how various candidates might stack up against one
another in a competition for the nomination. Perhaps Harris would have
prevailed. Perhaps not.
And the postmortems after a Trump
victory would not focus primarily on any ill-considered, easily weaponized
remarks, such as a comment Biden made on Tuesday that
seemed to refer to Trump’s supporters as “garbage.” They’d emphasize and dwell
on the unanswered questions surrounding the primary that never happened.
They’d be postmortems like no others,
because Trump is such a dire threat. That was the proposition of Biden’s 2020
campaign — he came out of quasi-retirement in his late 70s because, he told us,
stopping Trump demanded it. And barring Trump from the White House is similarly
central to Harris’s closing argument. She spoke on Tuesday night from the spot
in Washington where Trump infamously riled up the hellions who stormed the
Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as a reminder: Trump is an enemy of democracy and
an agent of chaos.
Which is truer than true, and which is
why a transition from Biden to Trump would prompt a magnitude of despair and an
intensity of soul searching unfamiliar from party changeovers past.
There’d be recognizable elements of
that reaction, such as a hindsight-is-20-20 analysis of the losing candidate’s
strategic decisions and strengths and weaknesses. What if Harris had chosen a different running mate?
What if she’d more quickly, squarely and eloquently articulated the changes in her
positions? What if she’d done more probing media interviews sooner,
to beat back any suggestion of excessive caution?
The list would be endless, and I hope
it would at some point yield to the acknowledgment that Harris burst into her
sudden candidacy with a remarkable assurance and poise that greatly exceeded
her detractors’ expectations. That she summoned enormous energy and
demonstrated formidable drive. That she delivered an excellent convention
speech. That she demolished Trump during their one debate.
But she was denied the experience —
the seasoning — of a full primary process. What if she’d benefited from that?
Or what if that process had produced a Democratic candidate who could have more
easily established separation from the incumbent?
What if that incumbent hadn’t held on
so tightly for so long? That’s the question that so many other questions would
come back to, in a manner that would tie the verdict on Biden’s presidency to
the name of his successor with an ironclad tightness. That’s no doubt part of
why Biden has reportedly itched to get out on the campaign
trail on behalf of Harris — he understands not only how much
the country has riding on this election but also how much he individually does.
And that’s the millionth reason I’m
fervently hoping and desperately praying that Harris prevails. I believe Biden
to be a good man who has done much good for us. That can rise to the surface if
we don’t sink to the bottom.