A chorus of pundits is calling for Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race after his disturbing, if not frightening, debate performance last week. Some elected officials, such as Representative Lloyd Doggett, the Texas Democrat, have gotten there. But if Biden does choose to end his reelection bid, it might well be best for the Democratic Party and the country if he not only declined the nomination but resigned from the presidency.
The idea, blithely implicit in so many calls for him to withdraw from the race, is that he could serve the remainder of his term with the accolades of a party grateful for his withdrawal, and his remaining in office would be no big deal. He’d earn the Democrats’, if not Americans’, thanks for an act of unselfishness—a dignified exit.
But remaining a caretaker president for seven months after a Democratic, if not national, panic over his competence is risky and untenable. By what logic is Biden, 81, visibly slipping in his gait, carriage, and verbal acuity, too old to run for president but just fine serving as president? Some have made the case that Biden can be too old to campaign effectively but not too old to govern confidently. But, as Franklin Foer notes this bifurcates the presidency as if the two jobs—governing and persuasion—were distinct duties rather than each being essential.
Besides, if Biden withdraws from the race but does not resign, the nation, the press, and America’s adversaries will have little reason to assume his governing abilities remain sufficiently unimpaired. Nothing about Biden’s performance at the CNN debate inspired confidence about his ability to serve another seven months as commander-in-chief amid war in Europe and the Middle East. Nothing suggested that the governing part of his portfolio, whatever that is, remains unaffected. A reminder of how bad it was: Biden said that his administration had “finally beat Medicare,” and in a discussion of reproductive rights, a winning issue for Democrats, he injected a non-sequitur about the murder of a woman by an undocumented migrant—a horrific incident Trump has demagogued repeatedly. More reports of Biden faltering are starting to trickle out. See Carl Bernstein here on stories of deterioration. The CNN pratfalls seem more significant than verbal miscues of the kind everyone has and with greater frequency as one ages, even accounting for the president’s lifelong battle with stuttering. If Biden’s problems merit withdrawal from the race, they would seem to merit resignation from the presidency.
As a matter of politics, of forestalling the GOP winning the House, Senate, and White House, it’s best that he really exit the stage. I’m still agnostic on whether he should get out of the race. But I’m convinced that if Biden gets out of the race, staying in the Oval Office will be dire. The magical thinking that, for the moment, holds that he is in some sweet spot that allows him to govern ably while being ridiculed as an invalid will evaporate. There will undoubtedly be more calls to invoke the 25th Amendment and why shouldn’t there be?
If Biden chooses to stay and fight, engaging in rigorous, TelePrompTer-less campaigning, and accepts the nomination in Chicago, that is another matter—also fraught with considerable and obvious peril, to be sure. It’s hard to see Biden getting that nomination, let alone defeating Donald Trump unless he takes extraordinary measures to prove that the disaster in Atlanta was just a “bad night.” Friday’s interview with George Stephanopoulos seems an eternity away.
Resignation would make Kamala Harris the president of the United States—a move that comes with its own set of risks, but less than leaving her the nominee while Biden remains president. Biden’s resignation might, but not certainly, forestall a fight for the nomination. A sitting President Harris would be better positioned to lock down the Biden delegates and to be nominated at the Chicago convention next month than at a convention where Biden releases his delegates or even endorses her while remaining the president. Being the incumbent president, the first woman president, and the first South Asian president could give Harris a better chance of defeating Trump in November. Over the five days since the debate, pollsters and political scientists have noted that incumbency is a strong predictor of reelection. President Harris would be an incumbent with a chance to reintroduce herself to the public in the most dramatic fashion.
One danger of Harris being suddenly elevated to the Oval Office is that she is unlikely to win congressional confirmation of a vice-presidential nominee before Election Day. Under the 25th Amendment, which was ratified in 1967 in large part to avoid what happened in 1964 when there was no vice president for over a year following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Harris would nominate a vice president, just as Richard Nixon tapped then-Representative Gerald Ford in 1973. The Michigan Republican and House minority leader was quickly confirmed as vice president by a Democratic-controlled Congress following the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew in 1973.
Harris would face a much harder time garnering confirmation for her vice presidential nominee. The Republican-controlled House would put any Harris pick through a gauntlet or—like Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland–simply not conduct hearings, let alone a vote, even if she offered a well-respected choice. Senate Republicans could also stymie a vote. This would leave House Speaker Mike Johnson not two heartbeats from the presidency but one. That is a sobering prospect.
However, any Republican refusal to confirm senators such as Mark Kelly, Chris Murphy, or Amy Klobuchar, or non-politicians like former Joint Chiefs Chairs like Mike Mullen or William McRaven as vice president could boost Harris’s argument that the do-nothing Republicans are unfit to govern.
If this sounds too fantastic (meaning farfetched, not wonderful), this is an awesome (Godfearing and trembling, not terrific) moment when risks abound with every move. Joe Biden’s resigning from the presidency may be among the less risky moves ahead. It would powerfully solidify his legacy, which includes not only a remarkably productive term amid war and pandemic but also championing of Black Americans. For eight years, Biden stood by Barack Obama as vice president with never a hint of anything less than full support, which, in part, helped him with African Americans in 2020. During the Obama years, he was then an older (not wizened) white guy who enthusiastically cheered his Black boss. Resigning and propelling Harris into the presidency should at least be considered among the agonizing options before him and his family.
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