David Ignatius has been a brilliant and insightful writer for WaPo for a long time:
Whether Joe Biden decides to run for reelection in 2024 or not, [That's still up in the air, huh? Yeah, no announcement.] the central achievement of his presidency is already clear. He is the person who moved decisively to stop Donald Trump — first at the ballot box and now through his administration’s steady, unblinking application of the rule of law.
True. Insightful point.
If Biden and his team can succeed in that mission over the next two years, I would bet that he will do what any chief executive around his age does, which is to think carefully about finding a successor who can carry on his policies and preserve his accomplishments.
I did the math in my head a couple of times. This is 2022, next year is 2023--does Mr. Ignatius mean 2022 and 2023? When would his "successor" run, in 2024? This is also September 2022: to use "year" when there are less than four months remaining in that year is not a good approximate use of the word. Mr. Ignatius cannot mean literally "the next two years" for then he would be designating his "successor" two months before the November, 2024 election. Or does he mean, Biden will run for reelection to keep 45th at bay, win, and then after his inauguration for a second term turn things over to his veep? I really don't understand but the last scenario assumes what the first clause of the first sentence of the article states as a contingent. ...I'm at a loss.
For all his ups and downs, Biden has been consistent in framing that goal. When he entered the 2020 presidential race in April 2019, he said bluntly: “We are in the battle for the soul of this nation.” If Trump won another term, he warned, “He will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”
Biden was right, and he set his course to stop Trump. ...The political class often echoed Trump’s line that Biden was too old and inarticulate to be president. Biden’s wry retort, way back in December 2018: “I am a gaffe machine, but, my God, what a wonderful thing compared to a guy who can’t tell the truth.” Ha-ha!
Biden’s victory at the polls...was a hinge moment in U.S. history. Trump, as we now realize with shocking clarity, was willing to do anything to cling to office. But he failed, thanks partly to principled Republicans who refused to join a coup — and thanks even more to Biden, who ran a disciplined campaign as a centrist who would restore normal order.
Yes, it was. President Obama put it bluntly to voters in North Carolina in late 2016 "the fate of the republic rests on your shoulders." I was in bed for three days after the Catastrophe. It was a new country that I called America 2.0; whether that new country would be a new republic seemed unlikely to me. It almost wasn't. Joe Biden, with a huge assist from Jim Clyburn, stanched the bleeding, but had Biden stopped Trump? Our European allies thought Biden would be an "intermission" between two terms of Trump. They may be right, still. Then came Trump's direct attempts to overthrow the Republic: the Big Lie which continues to this day and, of course, Coup Day, Jan. 6. Now, in the ninth month of 2022, Trump looks grievously wounded. But is he dead politically? Clearly not. Will Trump be more grievously wounded over the next two years and two months, or will he gradually recover? And if he is defeated again, is that the end of him? I am of the opinion that America will not be free from the gravitational pull of that black hole until he is literally dead.
Biden’s inaugural speech on Jan. 20, 2021, focused on this basic mission. “Democracy has prevailed,” he said. ...“We answered the call of history,” he said toward the end of the speech. “We met the moment.”
Biden at first hoped that Trump would accept defeat and go away. He avoided mentioning him by name for most of his first 18 months, referring to him as “the former president.” He must have hoped that Trump, starved of publicity to feed his ego, would shrivel to normal ex-presidential size. But Trump couldn’t adjust to reality. His stationary bore the presidential seal, he treated super-secret government documents as his personal property, and he insisted that he had never lost the election at all.
Ignoring Trump wasn’t going to work. It only made him clamber for attention more loudly and recklessly. And Trump’s supporters amplified the danger. So during a Sept. 1 speech in Philadelphia, Biden changed tone. He stated bluntly the idea that brought him into the presidential campaign back in 2019: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
It was true and the momentous part was including Trump's supporters. Until that speech, every national politician had given Trump voters a pass. It was the Demagogue, not his supporters. You can't do that in a democracy! He didn't seize power in a coup d'etat in 2016 (he attempted to retain power via coup in 2021), a slight minority (substantially more than Hitler got in 1993) of voters (with encouragement from Moscow) and the rickety machinery of the Electoral College put him in power. You're going to ignore 62.9 million people?! Obviously sir, madam, you are a moron if you do.
Biden’s language [in Philadelphia] was tougher, but the message was the same one he delivered in his inauguration speech. If Trump’s extremism could be stopped, he said, “then ages still to come will say … we kept the faith. We preserved democracy. … We heeded not our worst instincts but our better angels.”
Biden showed us in that speech that he was a fighter; he was not a politician, he was not going to pander to and appease the MAGA Republicans.
Biden might have difficulty governing after the midterm elections, and 2024 remains a mystery. But as Trump’s political death spiral accelerates, Biden’s presidential legacy is nearly complete.
