Following the death of Jimmy Carter on December 29, a journalist asked Joe Biden to describe the 39e president of the United States. Without hesitation, he responded that Carter was the epitome of decency, a man who spent his entire life in service to the United States, marked by unconditional love for his country. Did Joe Biden know that this description of Jimmy Carter also fit him like a glove?
Published at 7:00 a.m.
This Monday, the 46e President of the United States gives up his place at the reins of the country. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will say goodbye to the White House. Years ago, one of my management professors told us that when a leader retired without having post-career plans, they died within five years. It’s a prognosis that has always tugged at my heart. Today he worries me.
I don’t know Joe Biden’s plans. I don’t know what he’s going to do tomorrow or next month, but I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming that he won’t go build houses for Habitat for Humanity, like Jimmy Carter did after being president. And I doubt he will take up painting, as George W. Bush did once he became a private citizen again. Perhaps Joe Biden will adopt the Obama recipe and we will see him producing documentaries for Netflix or as narrator of National Geographic series. Or maybe not.
President Biden doesn’t seem to have the energy for a life of activity away from Washington. Not because he is 82 years old – Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones is the same age and he is still touring the world with the group – but because Joe Biden seems tired and weakened.
He gave absolutely everything to his country. First as a young senator from the State of Delaware at the age of 29. The man whom millions of Americans thought was too old to be commander in chief began his career almost too young to sit in the Senate. After his first victory in 1972, he would be re-elected six times, try to be president three times and become vice president twice. He will have buried a first wife, a daughter and a son and will have pardoned the other. He will also have found love again. Jimmy Carter had Rosalynn. Joe Biden has Jill.
Flowers and a pot… to put them
Among his successes, Joe Biden will have brought his country, with compassion and strategy, out of a pandemic that has killed more than 1 million Americans.
He was the maestro of a bipartisan infrastructure agreement worth more than $1 trillion. An agreement which will lead in particular to the repair of bridges and other structures, of course, but also to internet access for all and essential medicines available at reasonable prices.
Basic things, but strangely not accessible in a country which constantly trumpets itself as the best in the world and where there is no shortage of great wealth.
Beyond the astronomical value of this plan, it is its bipartisanship that must be celebrated. Throughout his career, President Biden has been able to rally the left and the right. Today, several elected officials prefer to surf the divides. Divide and conquer.
-And more than 200 years after the founding of the country, Joe Biden will also have been the first president of the United States to appoint a black judge to the Supreme Court. After 115 nominations, this institution is finally more representative. In four years, the Biden administration has also canceled $183.6 billion in student loans, sources of great social inequities.
PHOTO KEVIN LAMARQUE, ARCHIVES REUTERS
Joe Biden delivers remarks to mark the confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court, in 2022.
Joe Biden’s successes go beyond politics and the Democratic Party. They represent cultural and structural changes that will continue to improve the lives of generations of Americans.
Obviously, Joe Biden’s four-year term will not have been flawless. Yes, I know: he should have given up on a second term by passing the torch much earlier. Moreover, this is what he had prepared the Americans for by declaring himself to be a transitional president. Politicians often hang on for too long. It was not Joe Biden who invented this formula and he was certainly not the first to have clumsily applied it.
Still, I will never forgive the Democrats for the harshness used to oust Joe Biden from the presidential race. It’s all in the manner and Biden deserved better. With his departure, there is also an elegance and refinement that leaves Washington.
In May 2018, speaking of the late John McCain, who had spent his final years as a senator on a sort of path to redemption, NPR’s Scott Simon said, following criticism that McCain received just before his death: “Do you think you will reach your 80th birthday without contradictions, without mistakes and without regrets? And have you given the country an ounce of service like McCain did? » The same could be said about Joseph Robinette Biden.
It is with a broken heart that he will leave the White House this Monday. His longtime friend Ted Kaufman recently said of Biden: “Yes, it’s tough. But he’s been through tougher things than that. » Joe Biden’s greatest achievement is his family, which is his foundation. As soon as he wakes up Tuesday morning, he will need it badly.
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