What could go wrong?
What could go wrong?
O n Meet the Press yesterday morning, Adam Schiff didn’t call on Joe Biden to drop out.
Instead, he strongly hinted that the president should exit the race, and suggested that he begin consulting a wider circle of people about his fate. Schiff still stipulated, “Ultimately, this is a decision President Biden is going to have to make and President Biden alone.”
It’s that bad, huh?
Perhaps this week, Democrats like Schiff will begin to apply stronger medicine and say directly that Biden needs to end his campaign. Even then, though, there’s no lever for forcing out the president. Democrats will have to hope that a man whose judgment has never been good and who is now in marked decline will decide to make a humiliating retreat at a time when he is, on paper at least, the most powerful person on the planet.
Why would he do this, though? A characteristic of Biden’s presidency has been a rigidity that prevents him from acknowledging disasters. If he thought the Afghanistan withdrawal was a success, of course he’s not going to think a race in which he’s trailing Trump by a few points is a debacle in the making. If he could convince himself that the border was okay, of course he’s going to insist that his public performance is just fine, especially if he gets a little more sleep.
Although we don’t know to what extent he’s actually in charge, Biden occupies the office of president of the United States when countless people who aspire or have aspired to the office do not. In fact, no one who is currently calling for Biden to stand down has ever been elected president. Why should Biden, who has won the biggest sweepstakes in the political lottery via (he surely believes) his incredible talent and acumen, listen to any of them?
Besides, what’s in it for him? Avoiding the prospect of a stinging defeat in November that would tarnish his legacy forever and make him persona non grata in Democratic circles? Maybe. But should he drop out, he’d have to accept the stinging defeat of being the first presidential nominee forced from the ticket and not for any act of wrongdoing but rather for just being who he now is.
A loss in November is a potential humiliation; stepping down from the ticket would be a guaranteed humiliation.
Why would he take the latter when he can tell himself he still has a chance to forestall the former and not get humiliated at all? If he somehow wins in November (and he still has some significant chance of winning), his debate performance will be remembered as a bump in the road. If he steps down now, it will be remembered as a history-defining personal disaster.
The puffery about Biden is that he’s motivated by disinterested statesmanship. This looks past the extraordinarily grubby family influence-peddling operation that Joe knew about and participated in. If the president makes a disorderly retreat from the ticket, can he be sure that his family is taken care of? Democratic donors who want Biden gone would be more effective if they were working behind the scenes to secure sinecures and other sources of income for the Bidens rather than anonymously telling reporters how freaked out they are.
Finally, it’s common that someone in decline is the last person who realizes it or is willing to acknowledge it. It’s rare that an elderly person tells his son or daughter, “Yes, you’re right — you definitely need to take away my cars keys.” And here we are talking about, in effect, taking away Marine One and the nuclear codes.
It’s possible that the pressure on Biden becomes irresistible and is enough to overcome all of this, but that would probably require top party leaders turning on Biden and being willing, if he doesn’t cooperate, to go public. But the Adam Schiff notion that Biden will check around with some more objective people and, based on his public-spiritedness and good sense, decide to stand down is almost certainly a fantasy.