In a time where selflessness from politicians attracts a huge amount of attention, because it is something that rarely happens, the President's announcement of his decision to bow out of the 2024 election campaign, and his subsequent endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic party nominee is a rare act of self sacrifice and a demonstration of commitment to the good of the country and its people, will mark this President as one of the best since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Putting country above career and above one's own ambition has become as rare an event as a total eclipse.
The fact that it came at the end of three weeks of inexcusable chaos and panic, resulting from the President's debate performance makes it all the more remarkable. I'm still angry at the manner in which party leadership fell apart, in many cases taking it upon themselves to make their own pop-up announcements of their opinion about what the President should do, and at the fact that major donors used money as a means of pressuring the President into deciding to do what they wanted him to do.
I remain unconvinced that President Biden would have lost this election. I don't trust either the media or the polls they rely on to support their contentions and theses, the main one being that President Biden is too old, and doesn't have the strength to finish out a second term. I do think that the President had lost control of the narrative, and in spite of a towering list of achievements and accomplishments, about which many people were just unaware, communicating his achievements and success was part of the reason he did not seem to be getting much traction.
But when it comes down to the actual election itself, if this country was willing to elect a convicted felon, who, as the President noted in the debate, "has the morals of an alley cat," who led an insurrection against the Congress in session with the intention of imprisoning, torturing and possibly killing members, along with the House Speaker and Vice-President, who is a pathological liar that can't be trusted, who himself doesn't trust the system that once elected him to the Presidency, and who is an anti-patriotic America hater, over a man with the achievements of President Biden during his first term, then that would be a sign of a major political paradigm shift. We would have arrived at a point where our electorate was putting our constitutional democracy in danger of falling because it lacks the education and information necessary to conduct a government "of, by and for the people."
I don't believe we were going there.
But it was this President's decision, as a result of his own uncertainty after observing three weeks of demoralizing chaos within the Democratic party, that will go down in history as one of the most selfless acts in American political history. The President had earned a second term based on everything he had accomplished. But he acknowledged that his ability to communicate his achievements was a weakness, and he also acknowledged this might prove to be costly during an election when there's no room to make mistakes. He recognized his Vice-President's viability as a potential candidate and made sure the party coalesced and unified around her leadership as quickly after he decided to step down as he could.
There's a difference between being a good, effective President, and being a great President. This is one of those kinds of selfless acts that identify greatness. The fact that even his critics can see this, and are furious that it is being recognized, is confirmation of the significance of this act. It is the thing that adds to his long list of accomplishments and five decades of selfless service to the people, and elevates him from being a good President, to being one of the great Presidents.
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