The Biden Tragedy

“A government of laws and not of men.” The phrase first appeared in the work of the English republican James Harrington, in 1656. John Adams adored it, used it in many of his own writings, and incorporated it into the constitution he wrote for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He saw it as a bedrock principle of American government. During the American Revolution, he frequently worried that the widespread adulation of George Washington as a savior figure was placing the new-born republic in danger.

But Adams’s hopes for the United States were never entirely realized. Yes, the Constitution provided the country, in theory, with a government of laws. But the powerful presidency created by that same document means that it has also been very much a government of individual men. And today the country is in the painful and dangerous position of seeing a man originally elected to restore the full rule of law, Joe Biden, deludedly clinging to the office as his mental and physical powers visibly decline, thereby threatening to wipe out everything he has accomplished since his election four years ago, and more.

Whether one sees the presidency as an American monarchy or as the institutionalization of revolutionary charisma, it has never simply been a republican office. Presidential powers and influence have varied over time, but the office has always had a mystique that goes beyond the formal powers allocated to it. That mystique, moreover, has only increased during the past sixty years. There is a reason why the word charisma, after its modern redefinition by Max Weber as a form of political authority, first entered widespread popular usage in connection with the presidency of John F Kennedy. Kennedy’s youth, vigor, confidence and sex appeal generated an aura around him that successors and would-be successors have struggled to recapture ever since. Historians have often pointed to the disjuncture between this aura and Kennedy’s relatively slender record of actual accomplishment, his limited popularity while in office, and his dangerous personal escapades—but the disjuncture itself illustrates the presidency’s quasi-mythical status. It is no accident that the name “Camelot,” redolent of myth and royalty, came to describe Kennedy’s brief time in office, and that Americans widely believed that his assassination had, in some sense, broken the country.

As my colleague Sean Wilentz pointed out last week, the status and powers of the presidency, already overly large, have grown even larger thanks to the Supreme Court’s badly mistaken and nakedly partisan ruling on presidential immunity. Beyond shielding Donald Trump from charges connected to the January 6, 2021, insurrection, it has vastly increased the scope of what the president can do without fear of sanction: “a decision so broad that it essentially places the presidency above the law.” John Adams would have been horrified.

An enormous investment in single individuals has always carried correspondingly enormous risks, as the history of monarchies so capaciously illustrates. In the US, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the stroke that incapacitated Woodrow Wilson in 1919 significantly altered the way the country negotiated two major historical turning points, and not in good ways. We can only imagine how differently the US might have dealt with the Depression and World War II had Giuseppe Zangara’s assassination attempt on Franklin Roosevelt in February 1933 succeeded (it nearly did). The election of a pathological narcissist in 2016 had disastrous effects that are too recent to need retelling here

For most of Joe Biden’s presidency, any comparison to the stroke-addled Wilson seemed unfair and partisan. Yes, Biden was the oldest person ever elected to the office. Yes, he was at an age when only a small minority of men are still in good enough physical and mental condition to handle the enormous strains of the American presidency. Yes, the Republicans routinely circulated video clips of Biden stuttering, stumbling, straining for words, staring into space. But in March, he gave a fiery, effective State of the Union speech, making it seem as if he had defied the actuarial rule. Liberal commentators pointed out, ad nauseam, that Biden had never been an effective public speaker and had always dealt with a stutter. It was easy to conclude that the Republicans were peddling deceptively edited clips, nothing more. By most accounts, Biden did in fact remain in reasonably good shape through the early spring of 2024. But since then, as can easily happen in the elderly, a quick decline began. And as is now being reported, Biden’s aides and advisors, in a panic and probably unwilling to admit the truth even to themselves, largely covered it up, hoping against hope that it was temporary, not serious, not real.

And then came the debacle of June 27. From the moment that Biden stepped onto the debate stage against Donald Trump, he looked feeble, frail, lost. He made one painful verbal stumble after another, strained to find words, misspoke. He did not, contrary to what the Republicans gleefully charged, give signs of severe cognitive impairment. But old age has many different ravages besides senility, including slowness, hesitancy, weakness and memory lapses, and all those were there on full display during the debate. Columnists like Rebecca Solnit, who argue that Biden did well compared to the feverishly mendacious Trump, and that the media should stop harping on his frailty, are deluding themselves. No honest observer of the debate could fail to be horrified by Biden’s performance.

If this had been a primary debate, against a reasonable Democratic opponent for the nomination, Biden’s campaign would have ended there and then. The loss of support would have been complete, and for good reason. Everyone would have agreed that a man in this condition, regardless of his admirable record, was in no shape to run for president, let along serve as president. If this is what Joe Biden was like in 2024, at age 81, what would he be like four years later?

But with the election barely four months away, and the Democratic Convention approaching, the situation seems far more vexed and complicated—virtually impossible. Can the Democrats ditch their nominee and pick another, without the support of primary voters? Can that new candidate—even Vice-President Harris—muster sufficient support quickly enough, including the all-important financial support?

Unfortunately, the basic facts of the presidential campaign, as it now stands, are stark and simple. If Joe Biden remains the Democratic candidate, barring some utterly unexpected turn of events, he will lose. Even before the debate, the race was on a knife edge. The polls confirm the obvious fact that Biden’s performance will drive many undecided voters towards Trump, while depressing the Democratic turnout. If the Democrats now nominate someone else, that person will still probably lose. But simply by upsetting the race and introducing a new degree of uncertainty, he or she might at least have a chance. Current polls offer no real guide to how Vice-President Harris, or any other Democrat, might do, because so much will change if Biden steps aside. In any case, especially faced with the possibility of Donald Trump unchained in his second term, the chance is very much worth taking.

But there is one big obstacle in the way of the Democrats grasping this possible lifeline: Joe Biden himself. He seems determined to stay in the race, determined to deny what the American public saw so clearly on June 27. Worse, he is apparently now relying especially on the advice of the one person least qualified to give it: his troubled son Hunter, who has a deep vested interest in his father remaining in office, since he clearly hopes for a presidential pardon.

Old age, as Charles de Gaulle said in reference to Marshal Pétain, is a shipwreck. After a long and largely admirable political career, and after a highly successful presidency, Joe Biden’s ship is now crashing onto the rocks. After defeating Donald Trump and working to restore a government of laws and not of men, he is making American politics about the stubborn, selfish ambition of one man: himself. It is a tragedy, and one that we all may pay for.