Get ready to hear a lot about “Joe Biden’s Act of Selflessness” in withdrawing from the presidential race. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a Biden acolyte, declared it “one of the most moving, selfless acts I’ve ever seen by an elected leader.” Even “some Christian leaders,” noted Family Research Council Action President Jody Hice on “Washington Watch,” “have actually called this a selfless act.”
But it’s worth asking whether such extravagant applause is genuine or performative. As a fawning political class compares Biden to President George Washington, the Roman general Cincinnatus, and other revered leaders who relinquished power mid-career, it’s fair to wonder whether or not they really have “come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”
There’s no question that Biden’s abrupt withdrawal from the race was historic. He is the first incumbent since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 to pull his name out of the ring in the middle of the campaign. “And unlike Lyndon Baines Johnson, who stepped aside because of the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, Joe Biden actually went through the primary process,” noted David Closson, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview. “He won 14 million votes and then decides to walk away — so, absolutely historic.”
The question is about Biden’s motive for withdrawing from the race. A truly selfless decision would indicate an altruistic awakening, in which the aging Biden suddenly realized, “You know what, I’ve exercised power for long enough. It’s time to give someone else a turn. It’s time to pack up my Corvette and head to the beach.”
Closson, for his part, doesn’t “feel comfortable using the phrase ‘selfless act’” to describe Biden’s withdrawal, “because look what happened for the three weeks between that CNN debate between Biden and Trump to the president’s decision,” he said. “The history books are going to talk about this. There has never been a more disastrous moment in a presidential campaign than that debate that Joe Biden had. … People will be studying that. It’s worse than the famous JFK versus Nixon debate, where Richard Nixon was sweating, and he looked kind of disheveled and unprepared.”
After the debate in late June, polls showed Biden steadily losing ground, as Republican nominee Donald Trump’s lead extended from 1.5% to 3.1% in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
“That debate triggered three weeks of soul searching and of uproar amongst the Democratic Party,” Closson added. There’s “a lot we don’t know at this point, but … you had three dozen elected Democrats at the federal level calling for Biden to drop out, you had Nancy Pelosi, you had Chuck Schumer, you had the Clintons, the Obamas that seemed to be applying a lot of pressure from all the public available reporting. And so, in my view, it does appear that the president was pushed out.”
A veteran investigative reporter recently published further evidence for this hypothesis, suggesting that Democratic kingmakers had convinced Vice President Kamala Harris to invoke the 25th Amendment — which could remove Biden against his will not from the campaign but from the presidency — if the president persisted in his reelection bid.
A second alternate explanation is that Biden bowed out of the race for the sake of his reputation. The lavish praise for Biden’s “selfless act” supports this interpretation. National Review’s Dan McLaughlin suggested, “Part of the implicit deal in getting Biden to step down has been that party bigwigs will continue to lavish praise on him.” “The View” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin predicted that “history books [will] remember him very fondly” for withdrawing from the race.
This is not necessarily a negative interpretation. Pursuing power and pursuing a good reputation are both forms of pursuing self-interest. Experience teaches us that people usually act in their own self-interest (or at least their perceived self-interest). In its proper place, self-interest serves a useful function. Jesus appealed to self-interest as a motive for God-fearing (Matthew 10:28), and Paul employed it as a motivation to work (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Paul elsewhere calibrated its proper balance, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4). Those who ignore their own self-interest often suffer for it.
But if there is a self-interested reason for Biden to withdraw from the race, his decision is not “selfless.” Truly selfless decisions are rare, which is what makes them so noteworthy. Even Washington’s decision not to accept reelection to a third term in office was shaped by his desire to return to Mount Vernon and, likely, his desire to shape his legacy.
It’s possible that both of these alternative explanations played a role in Biden’s decision. Perhaps Biden faced a mutiny within his own party strong enough to force him out, but these mutineers left him the opportunity to retreat with dignity. Perhaps the imagery of a woman of mixed race replacing an old, white man as the party standard-bearer was too much to resist. By endorsing Harris as his replacement instead of opposing her, Biden could cement “the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party” as his legacy, Closson suggested. Perhaps Biden preferred to leave office in a parade rather than on a boot.
It’s possible, but we don’t know for sure.
In fact, “there’s a lot we don’t know,” said Closson. “A couple of years from now, I’m sure, Biden staffers are going to write tell-all books where we’ll learn a little bit more about the president’s thinking in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to the decision.”
“As Christians, I think, as a good principle, an opportunity to learn here, we should again reserve judgment,” Closson advised. “Christians are people of truth, and I don’t think we want to ever prejudge a situation.” Paul warned the Corinthians, “Do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart” (1 Corinthians 4:5).
But biblical wisdom also doesn’t require Christians to swallow evident falsehoods; we can exercise discernment about what information to accept as trustworthy. “The language of ‘selfless act’ — the facts that we know don’t seem to bear that out,” Closson said, “at least [not] at this point.”
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.