Joe Biden has been as good a president as any and better than most. Based on his record, he has earned a second term. Yet he stood down from his re-election campaign to allow someone younger and more the picture of vigorous health to finish the work of keeping the nation, and the world, safe from Donald Trump.

This is the most unselfish act by any politician since Lyndon Johnson’s abrupt exit in 1968. Only somebody who loves his country more than himself could do what Biden did.

It was as historic as his election four years ago and profoundly noble. But the moment is also poignantly sad.

Biden was not compelled by any fair comparison to the character and record of the Republican nominee. Instead, he acceded to polls that spread defeatism and panic among other party leaders, down-ballot Democrats and major donors.

“It’s not fair, but it’s a fact,” said Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo.

Some of that pressure unquestionably stems from sincere fear for the nation’s future. Others were obviously obsessing about their personal prospects — no surprise there.

A self-fulfilling prophecy

It snowballed quickly. Around the time Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi joined the doubters, it had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A better debate showing against Trump might have stopped the bleeding, but it was the beginning of the end. A shaky performance in an ABC interview made things worse for Biden. One major poll showed voters were more concerned with Biden’s physical and mental decline than with Trump’s criminal charges and his menace to democracy.

Plumbing new depths of spite and pettiness, Trump and his cult greeted the news of Biden’s exit with “Crazy Joe” smears and absurd demands that Biden resign the presidency. Trump’s remarks were monumentally graceless, showing again the emptiness of his character. Until Sunday afternoon, Trump was relishing Biden as his foil. Overnight, Trump’s path to a second term became a lot more perilous.

Biden’s long service to the nation is not over. He can campaign for Harris as freely as he wants. He can also devote his remaining months in office to proposing detailed reforms to immigration laws and confronting an arrogant Supreme Court that has unmoored itself from any allegiance to the Constitution.

Many Americans are disappointed at how Biden has been treated and will be expressing their anger. The best way to do that, as always, is to vote.

It has been astounding all along that someone only three years younger and scarcely able to put two coherent sentences together has poisoned so many minds with notions of Biden’s mental incompetence. But that is Trump’s shtick, as the most proficient political scammer in U.S. history. And he found ample accomplices among the ranks of Democratic doubters.

A dramatic shift in dynamics

Overnight, Biden removed age as a Democratic liability. Suddenly, it’s Trump who looks too old for the job.

The new Democratic nominee, most likely and deservedly Vice President Kamala Harris after a spate of endorsements (including Biden’s own) would be exactly the type of capable, prepared and younger opponent whom Trump didn’t want. Her appeal to women, given her forceful statements on reproductive rights, is a plus. So is her law-and-order background as a prosecutor, a sharp contrast to Trump’s lawlessness.

Harris’ selection should not appear dictated. Biden has effectively released his convention delegates and some way needs to be found to give them a democratic (small d) choice. A good suggestion that had been made called for a series of televised town meetings, moderated by a respected neutral leader such as Obama, followed by the virtual poll that the Democratic National Committee has been planning ahead of their national convention.

The precedent for a virtual nomination was set four years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Chicago convention could proceed as planned on Aug. 19. One reason to pre-empt its major decision with a virtual nomination would be to prevent a repeat of the nightmarish 1968 convention, also at Chicago, where a retiring president had left the choice to the delegates. This one has the potential of disorder over Israel’s war in Gaza, just as that one did over the U.S. war in Vietnam.

Now that delegates have a meaningful role, delaying their major decision to the third week in August is risky because Republicans are already muttering about inventive legal schemes to try to block Democrats from electing anyone.

A love of country

Biden’s statement deserves to be remembered with admiration, respect and nostalgia. There wasn’t a hint of resentment or self-pity in it. It was a paradigm of character, national leadership and love of our country.

Surprisingly, he did not mention helping Ukraine defend itself against the most ruthless aggression since World War II. To abandon that democracy now would tell Russia and China that the world is theirs for the taking.

That represents one of the sharpest and most fateful differences between the Biden-Harris administration and the dictator-friendly isolationism of Trump-Vance.

It is for the world’s sake, and our own, that a good man and good president has passed the torch to a younger generation.

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