We live in remarkable times. President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the presidential race at such a late date is extraordinary. Richard Nixon stepped down from the presidency in August 1974, but that was not a presidential election cycle. Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman surprised people by announcing that they would not run again, but they made their decisions in March of presidential election years, not in July. Franklin Roosevelt delayed his decisions to break protocol and run for his third and fourth terms, but in both cases, he decided to run again, not withdraw. A candidate dropping out this late in the process, with weeks to go before the party convention, is unprecedented.
Yet Biden’s decision is merely the capstone on a memorable and historic week—or nine days, to be precise. This long “week” began on July 13, with the failed assassination attempt against Donald Trump that came close to succeeding; the Secret Service is reeling under mounting revelations of security lapses, for which explanations will be demanded starting tomorrow, when Director Kimberly Cheatle appears before a House committee. Trump rose from the near miss, of course, and the image of his bloodied face and raised fist is sure to be one of the most iconic in presidential history.
Though these two bookends—the Trump shooting and the Biden withdrawal—are certainly the most memorable events, the whole week has been historic. In the midst of it all was the Republican National Convention, unusual in that the delegates and attendees were remarkably united—not the norm for a Republican convention. Most GOP conventions have some drama over the nominee, as in 2016, when Ted Cruz was booed for being insufficiently supportive of Trump, or over the platform, which often sets off policy fights. The degree of unity seen at the convention in Milwaukee reflects Trump’s dominance within the Republican Party. In 2016, his nomination almost set off a civil war inside the GOP. Now, he is the party’s central figure. Only one other man has won the GOP nomination three times: Richard Nixon, in 1960, 1968, and 1972. Trump is the first Republican to win it three straight times.
The convention also nominated J. D. Vance for vice president, which, if not necessarily historic, was at least remarkable. Eight years ago, Vance was an unknown 32-year-old from a hardscrabble background in drug-ravaged Appalachia. Then came his terrific best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which not only detailed the challenging circumstances of his childhood but also gave voice to an oft-neglected segment of America. At the time, Vance was viewed as more of a policy intellectual than a political figure, but he ran in a crowded field for Ohio’s Senate nomination, secured Trump’s endorsement, and won, entering the Senate at just 38. Now he stands a good chance of becoming vice president—and Trump’s heir apparent.
As the Republican Convention was unfolding, we learned that President Biden had Covid. This, too, had an historic aspect to it. Trump, of course, came down with Covid in 2020, in the fall of that year’s presidential campaign. The disease was more deadly back then and could have proved fatal to the then-president—and some reports suggest he had a much worse case than publicly revealed. In 2024, Covid is still dangerous to the elderly, and Biden certainly fits that category. No president has died of illness in office since Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, though we’ve seen some close calls since then, including two heart attacks suffered by Dwight Eisenhower.
Biden was coping with Covid even as he fought against an astonishing revolt within his own party. Here was a man who had overwhelmingly won his party’s nomination, with 99 percent of the delegates. The president’s team designed the nomination process to guarantee that he would win with little opposition. There were no debates, and the one semi-serious candidate, Congressman Dean Phillips, was harangued for his disloyalty in even suggesting that Biden might be too old to run. Conservatives raising the issue of Biden’s age were dismissed as ageist, and Biden’s defenders accused the Wall Street Journal of parroting right-wing talking points when it suggested, in a well-sourced story, that the president was diminished. White House Press Secretary Karin Jean-Pierre scanted video images of a befuddled Biden as “cheap fakes.”
Then came Biden’s awful June 27 debate, followed by failed attempts to improve on that performance. Suddenly, those who had been defending the president and attacking his critics changed their tune. The media that had long protected Biden started engaging in hard-hitting journalism about his limitations and about mounting internal efforts to get him to quit. It must have been exciting for the journalists to get to do their jobs again; imagine if they had covered the administration with the same vigor from Day One. The rapid way that Biden lost the support of the New York Times and the Washington Post recalled Lyndon Johnson’s reported 1968 plaint after a hard-hitting Walter Cronkite report on the Vietnam War, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
Biden’s friends in the Democratic establishment turned on him, hard. Nancy Pelosi was reportedly behind much of the machinations, using her ally Adam Schiff to do her bidding and call for the president to step down. George Clooney, who three weeks beforehand had hosted a major fundraiser for Biden, published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for the president to leave the race. Clooney had reportedly spoken to Obama beforehand; lots of bad blood exists between the Biden and Obama operations. According to Axios, Democratic fundraisers even threatened to prevent Biden from securing funding for his presidential library if he did not do their bidding.
It’s hard to find a precedent for this kind of internal party coup against a sitting party leader. The closest example may be Barry Goldwater leading a small congressional delegation to visit Richard Nixon in August 1974 to tell him that he lacked sufficient congressional support to stave off impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate. But that visit, while momentous, was intended to inform the president of the reality of his situation, not pressure him into resigning against his will.
We’ll be hard-pressed to find another nine days so packed with history. Then again, the 2024 campaign has demonstrated that its only speeds are fast and faster, its only route the one with the wildest twists and turns. We have a long way to go, and how we’ll get there is anyone’s guess.
Photos: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images (left) / JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images (middle) / CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images (right)