The Shadow: Biden and LBJ

Thinking about two Democratic presidents who chose to serve just one term, and what happens when the negative overwhelms the positive.

As with, well, probably just about everyone, I’ve been ruminating on the 2024 election, but also the lead-up to the election itself and I’m filled with a tremendous volume of conflicted feelings.

It’s not terribly original to draw a comparison between Joe Biden and Lyndon Johnson. It was being made online at first because of Biden’s involvement of US interests in an unpopular conflict, much like Johnson did that brought down his presidency. Now, there’s a great deal of difference between how we were involved in Vietnam under LBJ (fighting the actual war) and what we were doing regarding the conflict in Gaza, but it was a comp being made as Biden struggled to gain any traction in the polls. Biden, like Johnson, would be brought down because of what he involved America in globally.

There was a further point of comparison between the two as both men elected to not seek reelection (which, regarding Biden, we will get into a bit more shortly). You could also note the fact that they were both longtime institutions in the Senate before their executive branch careers began.

Where the LBJ comparisons become especially valid is that they were both presidents who had an agenda and programs that did a great deal of good, but who were ultimately done in and brought down by poor choices on their parts that will color their legacy and give the Democratic Party a hole out of which they have to climb. For LBJ, it was the way in which he involved the United States in the Vietnam War. That is what everyone remembers and thinks about when it comes to the Johnson presidency. The work on Civil Rights and Voting Rights and all the things falling under the heading of the Great Society are forgotten. That’s not to say that LBJ did not make a tremendous misstep in terms of our commitment to the Vietnam conflict and that so many young men died so senselessly, but it so dominates our understanding of the Johnson presidency that those other things get lost.

Biden’s administration (I’ll get into what exactly obscures the legacy of his presidency) was able to do important things—leading the way on the economic recovery post-COVID, making sure we were supporting Ukraine’s efforts to stand up to the totalitarian encroachment of Putin and Russia, getting the Inflation Reduction Act passed with thin congressional majorities, putting Ketanji Brown Jackson in the Supreme Court, and filling countless other judicial vacancies. That legacy, what Biden and his administration were able to accomplish, will be overshadowed by everything else (that something else I’ll talk about shortly).

I’m going to attempt to square the circle here every so slightly on Biden and/or to show that two things can be true, at least partially true. I think a lot of how Biden was characterized, in the wake of that debate performance but also in the lead up to it, was somewhat unfair.

To be certain, he was older—older than one would probably want to see a presidential candidate. While I don’t think Biden’s performance and the questions about his ability can fully and totally be explained by Biden’s stutter, I do think that was a lot of what people were picking up on and responding to and that’s something to which I (as someone who occasionally stutters and stammers) am quite sensitive. The fact that Biden’s debate performance reads as quite strong and good tells us the issues were with the presentation (and those issues of presentation were always kind of there).

I also think the notion that Biden guaranteed he’d only serve one term was a bit overstated and a claim that’s disingenuous. In 2020, Biden set himself up as a transitional figure and a bridge to the next era. No one denies that.

While maybe one term was implied in statements like that, it was never definitively stated by Biden himself or on the record by anyone in the administration. Again, it might have been implied, or seemed to be implied, but there was nothing official. I also think it’s hard to argue against an administration that had a good record on so many issues. Yes, that record was not perfect and there were still real issues that needed to be addressed (inflation being the biggest one). But by the numbers/if one looks at just the facts, it was an administration that probably accomplished as much as any Democratic one in recent memory. So why would you run from that?

Maybe I’m delusional, maybe I’m just carrying the party’s water, I don't know. But I think all of those things are true; however, I also think it was clear that Biden could not be an effective messenger for what the Democrats needed to say in this election with Donald Trump running to be president again. This isn’t even considering how Biden speaks (his style, his gaffes, his age etc). What I mean is that Biden, as a figure, stopped being what people (by people, Democratic Party supporters and persuadable voters in general) wanted and responded to. I think you’d have to go back a long ways for a Biden that would be what people wanted in this moment. Whether or not Biden was “too old,” the fact of the matter is that the voting public perceived him as being too old and that’s what mattered. It couldn’t be addressed, corrected, or altered. It was what was perceived and it hurt the administration.

The kind of campaign one would have to run against Trump, and the approach to debating one would need to have for example, was just not playing to Biden’s strength in this time. As an up-and-coming politician and former prosecutor, Kamala Harris did seem better suited to being the centerpiece of that kind of campaign.

Something else that I found disingenuous was the notion that the Democrats needed to have an open and proper primary. We heard that cry after the fact, “There should have been an open primary! Then we would’ve arrived as someone who would’ve won.” In the 2024 primaries, people voted for a ticket (proceeding knowing that if Biden were not the candidate then Kamala Harris would be the pick).

It’s worth thinking about if there were an open primary, the substantial number of Kamala Harris supporters who would be feeling overlooked and taken for granted. Alienating African American women, the core of the Democratic coalition and the most consistent voting bloc, by stepping over Harris and pushing an open primary to give Andy Beshear or Gretchen Whitmer or someone else the opportunity to move past her would alienate the Party’s most important and loyal voters.

The questions about the timing (when should Biden have stepped aside) are certainly valid—it would have given the Harris campaign time to really ramp up, to fine tune strategy, etc etc. But you heard, while the change was happening, people saying that the “surprise” nature of this was to the benefit of the Harris campaign as the Trump campaign did not really have time to develop a true counterstrategy. It would have allowed for the contrast between Harris and Trump to be on full display for even longer, which might have affected the margins.

One can also take this election in the context of other elections around the world and the anti-incumbent sentiment that was making the rounds. Perhaps no matter what people were going to vote against the party in power (no matter who was at the top of the ticket). Could anyone have made a difference/any Democratic candidate won? Did Harris, in the face of everything, do quite well given the proverbial headwinds into which she was running?

The Democratic Party, and the voters who support the Democrats, are in a tough position. On the one hand, your prior standard bearer’s administration created a record that one would want to run on and emphasize. The Biden Administration did a lot of good work, and that should be the kind of thing that can buoy and lift up. But there’s also this tremendous shadow and sense of frustration that is related to Biden’s administration, which is quite justifiable. There’s this tremendous tension. I feel it in myself as someone who likes Biden and how he ran and implemented his administration but also came around to the notion that he, whether justified or not, could not be the nominee going into the general election. It’s painful and disheartening, but things don’t stop because of that.

His legacy changed so quickly. Biden spoke of being in the tradition of FDR, Republicans talked about Jimmy Carter, but for better and for worse perhaps the comparison is LBJ. What the Democratic Party and its voters do next will determine whether history repeats itself or if the course can be corrected.