A Candidate, Not a Cult Leader

President Joe Biden has chosen to put his country over his own ego, a heroic decision that shows the difference between a political party and a cult of personality.

Joe Biden, the president of the United States, has decided not to run for his office in 2024. He joins a small but honorable fraternity of men who, for various reasons, declined to seek reelection. This club was founded by George Washington, whose refusal to stand for the presidency again in 1796 was particularly important, because he was walking away from a virtually guaranteed victory.

Biden, by contrast, was facing the serious prospect of a loss, but his decision is similarly admirable. The president sees Donald Trump as a threat to American democracy, and he must know that he has been trailing Trump for months, even before the debate in June that sealed his fate. Biden tried to recover, but in every public outing, he raised more doubts than he dispelled. Anxious Democrats tried to get the message through to him, in private at first and then in public, that he was losing ground in swing states and that his continued presence in the race could even doom downballot candidates.