PUBLISHED: July 28, 2024 | www.baltimoresun.com
To be sure, he is no George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln. But as late Republican Sen. Roman Hruska observed about the U.S. Supreme Court justices, “We can’t have all Brandeises and Frankfurters and Cardozos.”
President Biden withdrew his reelection bid on July 21 not because he loved the White House less but because he loved America more. Biden’s self-sacrifice was unique in the annals of the presidency. President Woodrow Wilson did not leave the White House for 18 months after an incapacitating stroke in October 1919. President Franklin Roosevelt insisted on running for reelection in 1944 despite being physically and mentally on life support.
The president’s career began long before his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021. His entire life has been devoted to public service. He served as a U.S. senator representing Delaware from 1973 to 2009. There, he ascended to chair the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate Judiciary committees. He loyally served as President Barack Obama’s vice president from 2009 to 2017. After a well-deserved, four-year hiatus, Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Biden has earned honor and respect for tenaciously defending his family through thick and thin. Notwithstanding the political risks, he has offered unwavering support for his wayward son, Hunter Biden. My family, right or wrong, is Biden’s admirable gospel. The family unit, after all, is the cornerstone of America’s greatness. As Pope John Paul II sermonized, “As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live.”
Biden has overcome profound, personal tragedies that a lesser man could not have surmounted. Shortly after the election as the junior senator from Delaware, his first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident while shopping for a Christmas tree on Dec. 18, 1972, when a tractor-trailer crashed into their vehicle.
The Bidens’ sons, Beau and Hunter, were also in the car and survived with serious injuries. At the time, Beau was 4 years old and suffered multiple broken bones, while Hunter, who was 3, had a fractured skull. Senator Biden resisted the temptation to resign.
Tragedy struck a second time in 2015 when Beau succumbed to glioblastoma at age 46. He had served as Delaware’s attorney general from 2007 to 2015, served in the armed forces for a year in Iraq and won a Bronze Star Medal, and was vying for the Democratic nomination as governor of Delaware for 2016 when death prematurely arrived. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”
Biden brought Sweden and Finland into NATO. He imposed harsh economic sanctions for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which has crippled Russia’s oligarchs and provoked a brain drain of Russia’s best and brightest. The president has strengthened the encirclement, boycotting and isolation of China, including stiff tariffs, export and investment controls, and arms sales to Taiwan. He has not sought to undo former President Donald Trump’s voiding of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran or the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia. The defense budget has soared under Biden to nearly $900 billion.
The president appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court. She sports a liberal interpretive philosophy and is the first black woman and first former federal public defender to serve on the highest court. He made the corridors of power in the executive branch look more like America, appointing Native American Deb Haaland as Interior secretary and Cuban American Alejandro Mayorkas as Homeland Security secretary.
Biden can truly say, as was said in 2 Timothy 4:7-8: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day — and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”
The vast electoral center perks up with positives. It shuts down with negatives. Lay off President Biden. Nothing has ever been gained by beating a dead horse. Confront Vice President Kamala Harris on her policy deficiencies and stumbles. There is no shortage to choose from. Harris is saddled with defending Biden’s many fumbles: inflation, immigration, and radical social or cultural policies. It’s the same way Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey was hamstrung by the requirement to defend President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam quagmire in the 1968 presidential campaign.
I’m not sure I follow the recent message matrix from Trump and conservative talk shows that fixate on Biden getting bushwhacked, and Kamala helping to orchestrate the ruse to deceive Americans about his failing mental health. What’s to be gained by that? What audience responds to that? Who is the ideological right appealing to? In the meantime, Democrats are raising money hand over fist, and Vice President Harris looks presidential.
Go after Kamala Harris! Forget what’s become laughable about Biden’s geriatric walks down Air Force One.
It’s time to move on from Biden. Let history decide his legacy.
Harris is the opponent now. So start treating her like one and go after her hard.
Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.
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