F.D.R.'s Election Lessons for Joe Biden and the Democrats
In 1944, after nearly twelve years in the White House, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was determined to win reëlection, even as his body was failing him. Polio, hypertension, heart disease, and the brutal rigors of the job had ravaged him. To hide a tremor in his hands, he took to using a heavier coffee mug. A doctor limited him to half a pack of cigarettes a day and told him to get more rest. In May—a month before D Day—he could work no more than four hours a day. “His signatures had become wobbly, the strokes less thick and firm. His attention sometimes wandered,” Joseph Lelyveld writes in his book “His Final Battle,” on the last sixteen months of Roosevelt’s Presidency.
But the Second World War was raging, and Roosevelt was convinced that he was the person best equipped to safeguard his achievements, defend democracy, and stop future aggression. Roosevelt ordered his handlers and the Secret Service to disguise his frailties. Harry Truman, his Vice-President, told the press, “He’s still the leader he’s always been,” but privately confessed to an aide, “Physically he’s just going to pieces.”
Presidents are remembered as much for how they depart the office as for how they acquire it. Eight decades after Roosevelt’s final campaign, America is again confronting an election defined by the stubborn determination of the men at its center. Joe Biden is beset by mounting pressure to withdraw, which he has doggedly resisted. Two weeks after a shockingly debilitated performance during a debate against Donald Trump, the President has sought to prove that it was, in his words, a “bad episode” and not a “serious condition.” But the debate marked an indelible change in perspective among influential Democrats, donors, and the press, some of whom have called for him to step aside in order to avoid handing the election to the very man he warns could destroy democracy.
Less than six weeks before Democrats formally choose their nominee, Biden is marching down a path of constant peril: whenever he appears in front of a camera, he runs the risk of further inflaming fears about his fitness to beat Trump—to say nothing of serving another four years—with a narrowing window of time to nominate Vice-President Kamala Harris or another prospect. On Thursday, in a likely preview of competing images in the weeks ahead, Biden presided successfully over a summit of nato leaders united against Russian aggression, but marred the moment by introducing President Volodymyr Zelensky, of Ukraine, as “President Putin,” before correcting himself. In isolation, the stumble would be meaningless—but, as long as he is running, his words will never again be assessed in isolation.
A short while later, during a rare press conference intended to demonstrate his capacity to handle unscripted events, he flubbed his answer to the first question, referring to Harris as “Vice-President Trump.” But he recovered and answered questions for nearly an hour, showcasing a command of foreign policy. Asked about reports that he aimed to end his workdays at eight o’clock, he said they were false—he had meant to suggest that he would “pace” himself and start fund-raisers at eight o’clock instead of nine, so “people get to go home by ten o’clock.” He turned the exchange into a jab at his opponent. “My schedule has been at full bore,” he said. “Trump’s been riding around in his golf cart, filling out his scorecard before he hits the ball.” More to the point, asked repeatedly what might persuade him to step aside, Biden gave no indication that he would, and argued that the “gravity of the situation” facing the country requires his experience.
In Washington, the performance scarcely improved the mood among Democrats. Minutes later, Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became the fourteenth member of the House to call on Biden to drop out, writing in a statement, “I hope that, as he has throughout a lifetime of public service, he will continue to put our nation first.” Other members of Congress, who delayed public comments while the NATO summit was under way, were said to be preparing similar moves. “It’s running on fumes now,” James Carville, the Democratic strategist, said Thursday on CNN, referring to Biden’s campaign, and added that he thinks “it’s inevitable that President Biden will choose not to run for reëlection, and we’re going to have a tight, messy procedure of choosing a nominee.”
Biden had dismissed earlier calls to withdraw as the work of “élites in the Party” (“I don’t care what the millionaires think”), but it appeared increasingly likely that he would face more functional pressures. Wealthy donors, without whom he would not be able to organize or advertise, were recoiling. Writing for the Times, George Clooney struck a high-profile blow when he said that his impression of Biden, at a recent Los Angeles fund-raiser that he co-hosted, was one of “the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” adding, “We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate.”
Yet, even as concerned allies came forward, Biden’s campaign was rallying a diverse coalition to push in the opposite direction. He drew expressions of support from the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses, and from leading progressives, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (Next week, during the Republican Convention, in Milwaukee, Biden is set to travel to Texas and Nevada.) The net effect was that Biden had bought himself some time, but the prospect of a collapse of confidence would haunt his every appearance. Would it also haunt his place in history? “I’m not in this for my legacy,” he said at the NATO press conference. “I’m in this to complete the job I started.”
But completism is not self-justifying. In Roosevelt’s case, he won his final election, but strained to perform the Presidency as he previously had. He made a gruelling, fourteen-thousand-mile trip to the Yalta Conference, in Soviet Crimea, where he struggled to outmaneuver Joseph Stalin. Harry Hopkins, one of Roosevelt’s trusted deputies, was later quoted as saying he doubted that Roosevelt “had heard more than half of what went on round the table.” Winston Churchill, Roosevelt’s partner during the talks, recalled the President as “a pale reflection almost throughout.” Two months later, Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Roosevelt’s iconic record of accomplishment and of service to the nation ended with a bitter coda. At times, Biden has invited comparisons to Roosevelt for the scale of their challenges in office, and for the legislation they enshrined. Both men grappled with the seductions of longevity. Roosevelt served the public for more than three decades; Biden has for more than five. As the President considers how to safeguard his achievements, he might find wisdom in the perils of the past. ♦
