Hardly anyone sees Biden as a two-term president, both because of his advanced age and his bumbling in Afghanistan. Most Americans expect Biden not to run for president in 2024, a Quinnipiac University poll reported in August.
However, Biden has recently reaffirmed his commitment to running for reelection.
In March, CBS’s Nancy Cordes asked Biden, “Have you decided whether you are going to run for reelection in 2024? You haven’t set up a reelection campaign yet, as your predecessor had by this time.”
Biden responded, “The answer is yes. My plan is to run for reelection. That’s my expectation.”
That answer likely left our vice president in shambles.
Biden has already singled out Vice President Kamala Harris as his natural successor. He’s been pushing the phrase “Biden-Harris administration.”
However, Biden has limited Harris’s options by committing to a second presidential campaign.
Now Harris can’t run in 2014. She would be running against Biden, and that would sow infighting within the ruling party. What’s more, Harris has been polling very poorly and will likely struggle to win a presidential election after her tenure as vice president.
Still, Harris may be keeping a dirty trick up her sleeve.
The conservative blog Wayne Dupree speculated that Harris might use the 25th Amendment to remove Biden and usurp the presidency for herself.
The 25th Amendment enables a president’s cabinet to remove him from power in the event of incapacitation. It reads:
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
How dramatic!
Wayne Dupree also reported a rumor that Harris was considering former First Lady Michelle Obama as a running mate. Still, that’s just a rumor.
Plus, if Biden retires in 2024, then all this speculation would be rendered moot.
Declining to run for a second term would be unusual, but not unprecedented. Former President Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the presidential race in 1968, even though he remained eligible for a second full term. Former President Theodore Roosevelt declined to seek a second full term during the 1908 election, although he eventually ran for president again in 1912, after the first term of the Taft administration.
Even though Biden has recently committed to seeking a second term, he has proven indecisive in the past.
In late 2019, Biden’s campaign aides reportedly dismissed the idea of a second term for Biden.
One of Biden’s senior advisor said in 2019, “If Biden is elected, he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.” The advisor asked to remain anonymous at the time.
“This makes Biden a good transition figure,” the senior advisor added. “I’d love to have an election this year for the next generation of leaders, but if I have to wait four years to get rid of Trump, I’m willing to do it.”
Another advisor said, “He’s going into this thinking, ‘I want to find a running mate I can turn things over to after four years but if that’s not possible or doesn’t happen then I’ll run for reelection.’ But he’s not going to publicly make a one-term pledge.”
The advisors were ruling out a reelection campaign because of Biden’s advanced age and because of an incoming generation of leaders.
Then again, Italy recently elected a president who was 89 years old. Under Biden, the American bureaucracy has become only slightly more energetic than Italy’s, with our aging legislature, our overactive courts, and our senior citizen running the executive branch.
Plus, Biden has failed to make room for younger politicians, even as he bloviates about the importance of new blood.
Biden said during a campaign event in March 2020, “I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”
In reality, Biden has hardly acted like a “bridge” since taking office. He has shut out the younger generation of leaders from his Cabinet. Mostly, he has appointed alumni of the Obama administration, like John Kerry, Janet Yellen, and Merrick Garland.
However, there’s one exception: the ambitious upstart Kamala Harris.
The Horn editorial team