America just got a break from politics as usual
Wait. Was that good news?
Did someone just put the American people ahead of their own interests, their own power, their own career? Did an American politician—love him, hate him, or worry about him—just voluntarily decide to do the right thing? And more surprising—are we watching an American political party put aside its differences in the name of protecting American freedom?
To be sure, Biden’s withdrawal and the coalescing of Democrats around Harris is not unvarnished good news for either political party. The Democrats are still behind in the race. The Republicans have just spent a convention attacking a candidate they will no longer face.
But I think it might be good news for me and you—that is, for every ordinary American reading this piece. If nothing else, it is a clean break from the dread sense of inevitability hanging over the election and over American political life, a break from the endless refrain coming from the media and the politicians that the future is already scripted, that you personally have no choice in the matter, so buckle up and hold on tight.
For an American populace that seemed to be asking—begging—for a presidential choice that had not been foreordained by people who spend their lives on social media—well, we actually have it.
Biden did something many of us have been waiting for a politician to do for the last ten years: He put his country ahead of himself. Faced with a deadlocked electorate with concerns about Biden’s age and worry about the threat to freedom posed by a second Trump term, Biden made the choice to do everything possible to defeat Trump, even if it meant handing off the nomination to Kamala Harris, a woman who now can claim a share in in all Biden’s victories and offer new paths to compensate for his mistakes.
A Harris victory is far from certain. But let’s offer praise where praise is due: Biden and the Democrats just saved us from a white-knuckled election in which the Democrats continued running a damaged candidate because they were afraid to make a move. (You will remember this strategy from every Democratic presidential campaign since 2008.)
The next four months will be bruising—but not because both candidates are old men facing cognitive decline. We live in a country in which a former president promoted lies and fomented a mob to try to stop a legitimate election. We also live in a country in which many people worried about having someone over eighty making national security decisions.
One of those arguments no longer applies. Biden made his choice, and so gave Americans a real choice. He did as we all should: Put the country above party, and the country above self. There is no such thing as an indispensable man, we are reminded once more. Indeed, the American system is not about investing one person with the power to do everything, but about investing the people with the power to make decisions.
The spontaneous outpouring of support and fundraising for Harris from rank-and-file Democrats indicates that Democratic voters, if not Democratic media consultants, know that Harris will make a good president, maybe a great one, and that the people deserve a real choice in November.
It is a breath of fresh air—not just a new candidate but the very simple idea that maybe having candidates running for four straight years all the time is not a great idea.
Fun fact: We used to have short campaign seasons. Believe it or not, as recently as 1960 John F. Kennedy didn’t officially wrap-up the nomination until July, when he was nominated . . . at the Democratic convention. Imagine: a political landscape where there was only three months of speculation, instead of four years of ceaseless campaigning! Pollsters would go out of business! Even those Americans who do not personally care for Harris might well agree that a three-month presidential campaign is much less politically and psychologically burdensome than our endless campaign.
Harris still has her work cut out for her. She too would be a presidential first—and so she ought to tap into JFK’s standard answer to those who worried about his Catholicism: that in America no one should be counted out for their race, religion, or gender. Harris must find ways to communicate that in fighting to be the first female president, she is not just fighting for women, but for everyone who has ever been overlooked by the system.
But these are questions for our perpetual punditry machine. They are already eagerly forecasting, predicting, and speculating, mostly with an eye to who will win, rather than who will do the best job.
You and I, on the other hand, should be thinking about who will do the best job, and vote accordingly.
But let’s appreciate the change. After eleven months of stale polls, constant political bickering, and even crisis, Biden in one afternoon broke the cycle. It was unprecedented, sudden, wild. But it was also the right thing to do. As Jefferson wrote in 1787, democracy comes with certain evils, “the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing.” Americans now have a chance to make that choice again.Â
Adam Jortner is the Goodwin-Philpott Professor of History at Auburn University, and the author of Audible’s anniversary series, The Hidden History of the Boston Tea Party. Â