President Biden’s essential purpose

His party may try to seek his retirement, while others see his capabilities as leading to many alternatives.

|
Reuters
President Joe Biden walks into the Oval Office, May 6.

Leaders of the Democratic Party are now debating whether to ask U.S. President Joe Biden not to run again based on his performance in Thursday night’s debate with Donald Trump. They are correct in one respect. Asking him is preferable to forcing his exit, if that is what the party seeks. Yet they can also take a cue from Jill Biden. Last year, the first lady hinted that her husband has options other than being president.

“It’s Joe’s decision,” she told CNN. “And we support whatever he wants to do. If he’s in, we’re there.”

The idea of not setting limits on Mr. Biden’s future reminds us of the late actor Glenda Jackson. After decades of working in film and theater, she went on to a successful career as a politician, only to return to the theater at age 82 playing King Lear on Broadway for eight shows a week. When asked by The New York Times if she feared getting older, she replied, “The essential you is on the inside, it stays the same.”

As the average life span has risen, views have expanded about the potential of older people to keep contributing. “We’ve added a couple of decades, essentially an entire generation, onto our lives, and we haven’t, kind of, socio-culturally figured out how to handle that,” geriatrician Louise Aronson told CBS News.

Dr. Aronson believes public anxiety about aging leaders reflects a fear of aging itself. She suggested in a Wall Street Journal column that people should instead “create the kind of world we want to be old in, one of opportunities and recognition of competence at all stages of life.”

Mr. Biden may decide to stay in the race, as is very possible in coming days and weeks. But if he does bow out as a candidate, it need not be a retirement but rather a “rewirement.”  When George Washington stepped down as military commander in 1783 at age 51, he thought of himself as “gray” and “almost blind.” Yet he went on to be president for two terms. Then at age 66, he agreed to serve in the military again, Maurizio Valsania, a history professor at the University of Turin, wrote for The Conversation.

Had Mr. Biden lived in that age, stated Dr. Valsania, “his value would have likely outweighed his deficits in the eyes” of a country that was “aware of the wisdom that certain old leaders could still provide.” Such wisdom need not be confined to the curved walls of the Oval Office.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to President Biden’s essential purpose
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2024/0628/President-Biden-s-essential-purpose
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe