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George Clooney last week praised Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 election as “the most selfless thing that anybody has done since George Washington.” We heard this idea echoing throughout Democratic circles even before Biden stood down in late July — that he was nobly standing aside, in the manner of America’s first president, relinquishing power to save democracy for the greater good. Step forward the twenty-first century answer to John Adams: Kamala Harris.
It’s all such obvious BS. George Washington wanted to retire (for the third time) to Mount Vernon after his first term but was persuaded to run again in 1792 by Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and others. In 1796, he published his Farewell Address, which spelled out that he would not stand for a third term and urged Americans to put aside political differences for the sake of the Republic (not democracy, per se). Washington finally left office aged sixty-five in 1797. His departure set the two-term-limit precedent for presidents, which has only ever been broken by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won four elections. (In 1951, the two-term limit was added to the Constitution through the Twenty-Second Amendment.)
Contrary to Washington, Biden wanted to carry on — in spite of his obvious and accelerating infirmity
Biden, by contrast, will only serve one term. Contrary to Washington, he wanted to carry on — in spite of his obvious and accelerating infirmity — and it took a number of senior Democrats to pressure him to go. Rather than focusing on putting the nation’s finances in order, as Washington did, Biden will leave office with America some $35 trillion in debt. His leadership has essentially been an exercise in make-believe, as his advisors and cabinet spent almost four years insisting that he was firing on all cylinders when the truth was plainly the opposite.
After announcing that he would not be seeking re-election, Biden has come as close to vanishing as a serving president can. He is still in theory the leader of the free world for another 133 days. He tearfully vowed in his valedictory speech at the Democratic Convention in Chicago to “work like hell,” then slipped off for a week to a rich friend’s holiday pad in Southern California before taking another week at his beach house in Delaware.
It would be churlish to begrudge an old man some down time, especially after the summer Biden has had, and he did reportedly keep himself busy behind the scenes, dealing with the hostage killings in Israel and other matters. But his behavior is hardly selfless.
He’s back at work this week, or at least in Michigan speaking, and he must also be preoccupied with the fact his son Hunter has just pleaded guilty to federal tax charges. The White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Friday that Biden père would not pardon or commute any sentence given to his only living fils. We’ll have to see if that position holds until he leaves office in January. But what we can say is that Joe Biden may be a lot of things, but he is no George Washington.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
