Biden Didn’t Choose Patriotism Over Ambition. He Chose Both.
Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election campaign is being hailed as an act of great patriotism, of putting the national interest over individual political fortunes. Jon Meacham, the presidential biographer and sometimes Biden scribe, wrote in The Times this week that the president “has put the country above self, the Constitution above personal ambition, the future of democracy above temporal gain.” Biden himself made the case in his Oval Office address on Wednesday: “Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.”
It’s a lofty sentiment, but self-abnegation is not a prerequisite for principled action. Patriotism and ambition need not stand opposed; they can and should come together, as they so often do among the men and women who seek power or who seek to retain it.
It is no disrespect to Joe Biden to recall that before finally deciding to end his re-election campaign, he tried hard to avoid doing so. It is no disservice to his record to note that he was angry at the party leaders pressuring him to step aside.
Even now, Biden still thinks he has earned another go. “I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term,” he said in his Oval Office address. Only when the polling and the money started going wrong did he yield to what now seems inevitable.
In Biden’s 2020 campaign, patriotism and ambition were mutually reinforcing. He ran because he sought to protect American democracy from a second Trump term and because he felt he was the only one who could. The sad irony is that Biden’s case for his candidacy in 2020 — the need to win the battle for the soul of America, as he puts it — is the very reason, four years later, his own party urged him not to run.
“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, making the case for constitutional checks and balances. Our system assumes political ambition; it depends on it. Even Biden’s decision to forgo a chance at a second term serves his ambitions. He knows history will judge him more kindly for leaving the race — giving his chosen successor a chance to extend his legacy — than for insisting on what increasingly looked like a losing effort.
I admire Biden’s patriotism and his personal ambition. Ambition can be enlisted in the service of patriotism, while patriotism can be made real through raw, individual ambition. When we peer into the soul of America, we should always find both.
Carlos Lozada is an Opinion columnist and a co-host of the weekly “Matter of Opinion” podcast for The Times, based in Washington, D.C. He is the author, most recently, of “The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians.” @CarlosNYT