In 2020, Joe Biden strongly hinted that, if elected, he would serve only a single term.
Campaigning that year with then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), Biden said, “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”
As an unnamed adviser told Politico, “If Biden is elected, he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.”
But contrary to what his advisers, voters and perhaps even what Biden himself thought, he is running for another term. Should Biden win he would leave the White House at age 86, by far the oldest chief executive ever to serve.
Joe Biden enjoys being the person in charge, especially relishing signing landmark legislation that achieves long-sought objectives. In many ways, Biden has something in common with another president who entered the White House late in life.
Back in 1979, journalist Bill Moyers asked Ronald Reagan if he was “too old” and not “hungry enough to pay the price to become president.”
To that, Reagan answered: “Hungry enough for the job? Not in the sense of saying, ‘Oh, I want to say I’m president, I want to live in the White House.’ But hungry to do the things that I think can be done and at an age where I’m not looking down the road saying, ‘How will this affect the votes in the next election?’ But to be able from the first day to say, ‘I can try to do this for the people,’ — you bet I’m hungry to do that.”
Like Biden, Reagan enjoyed the chance to put his imprimatur on American society.
Despite whatever complaints they may have, most presidents relish the opportunities the office gives them. Harry Truman once grumbled that the White House was a “great white jail,” but ran anyway in 1948. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the oldest president at the time, sought a second term in 1956 despite a major heart attack and undergoing surgery for a severe bout with ileitis.
Announcing his intent to seek reelection, Eisenhower said, “The work I set out four years ago to do has not yet reached the state of development and fruition that I then hoped could be accomplished within the period of a single term in this office.” Eisenhower’s sentiments have been echoed by virtually every president since. Even some of the most beleaguered of presidents — Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump — wanted second terms.
Perhaps the president who most relished the job was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was once described as a “happy warrior who enjoyed every aspect of the power the presidency gave him, including the ceremonial, the frivolous and the seamy sides.” Roosevelt not only sought a second term but an unprecedented third and fourth.
In many respects, there are striking similarities between Roosevelt and Biden. Roosevelt earned the moniker “The Champ” from chagrined Republicans who suffered ignominious defeats at his hands. Today, Joe Biden believes that having beaten Donald Trump once, he can do it again. At a recent press conference, Biden said of Trump: “I know him well. And I know the danger he presents to our democracy. And we’ve been down this road before.”
Biden shares one more thing in common with FDR: believing his experience makes him the best person to continue in office.
Accepting renomination in 1944, Roosevelt declared, “The people of the United States will decide this fall whether they wish to turn over this 1944 job — this worldwide job — to inexperienced or immature hands” or to those “who now have seized the offensive and carried the war to its present stages of success.” According to Roosevelt, the task ahead was to “win the war — to win it fast, to win it overpoweringly.”
In 2023, Biden asserts that the U.S. is facing a national emergency of a different sort: “to defend democracy, stand up for our personal freedom, stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights.” Reprising a theme from the 2020 campaign, Biden argues we are in a battle “for the soul of America . . . [and] the question we’re facing is, whether in the years ahead, we will have more freedom or less freedom, more rights or fewer.” For Biden, the task ahead is to “finish the job” of securing those rights democracy confers on its citizens.
Biden’s likely opponent, Donald Trump, presents a unique threat to the republic, including calling for the “termination” of the U.S. Constitution. At a recent rally in Waco, Texas, Trump said, “In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
Trump promises that if he is returned to the White House, he will pardon those convicted of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, implement mandatory stop-and-frisk on urban streets, use the National Guard to fight street crime, purge the federal workforce, break up gangs and deport immigrants. According to his campaign, only Trump can “save America.”
Joe Biden enjoys being president. And like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Biden views himself as the most experienced, best-equipped person who can “give every American the freedom that comes with a fair shot at building a good life.”
2024 promises to be promoted as an Armageddon election, where each side views defeat as the end of the world, and victory as the only means of saving it. For both Biden and possibly Trump, this election promises to be a long, hard slog to the finish line.
John Kenneth White is a professor ofp olitics at The Catholic University of America. His latest book, co-authored with Matthew Kerbel, is titled, “American Political Parties: Why They Formed, How They Function, and Where They’re Headed.” He can be reached at johnkennethwhite.com.