“I love the job, but I love my country more,” said Joe Biden in what might be one of the most memorable presidential candidate exit lines since Alben Barkley’s in 1952.
More on “The Veep” in a minute.
Though he’ll be president until Jan. 20, Biden’s speech Monday night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago amounted to a farewell address.
“All this talk about how I am angry at those people (who) said I should step down – that’s not true, “ he also told the appreciative throng.
With equal grace, Barkley, Harry Truman’s vice president, gave up his shot at the Democratic presidential nod 72 years ago at the Democratic National Convention, also in Chicago.
A Graves County-born, western Kentuckian from Paducah, Barkley, like Biden, was a Senate veteran. He was majority and minority leader and a congressman before he was elected with Truman in 1948 and became “The Veep.”
Barkley and Biden were especially popular with organized labor. Dubbed “Union Joe,” Biden, by word and deed, was the most pro-labor president since FDR.
When Truman announced he wouldn’t run for reelection, Barkley said he was available, James K. Libbey wrote in Dear Alben: Mr. Barkley of Kentucky. At the convention, the Bluegrass State delegation backed Barkley. Truman, from Missouri, “urged his state’s delegation to vote for Barkley,” the author added. “Thus Alben became Truman’s heir apparent and the administration’s handpicked successor.”
Barkley was 74, and the convention had misgivings about his age. Skeptics included leaders of organized labor. Like Biden, Barkley enjoyed strong union support.
The issue of Biden’s age, 81, loomed larger, especially after his disastrous June debate with Donald Trump. He vowed never to quit the campaign until he did.
Biden’s staunchest supporters pointed to historical greats as old — or older — than the president. The president’s age was an assent, not a liability, wrote Bill McKibben in the Los Angeles Times: “Joe Biden is old. Like each of us, he comes from a particular place in history, in his case the LBJ years. And that’s one big reason why his first term has been so full of accomplishment: His age, often cited as the greatest obstacle to his reelection, is actually his superpower.”
Barkley made the same argument to labor leaders who personally begged him to step aside for a younger candidate. “I reminded them I was four years younger than Churchill; that Gladstone was Prime Minister of England at eighty-four; that Goethe completed Faust at eighty-two, and that Oliver Wendell Holmes did not retire from the Supreme Court until he was ninety-one,” Barkley wrote in That Reminds Me, his 1954 autobiography.
Simply put, a large number of Democratic leaders in 1952 concluded that a Barkley nomination would doom the party to defeat in November. The same fear was growing exponentially in the party with Biden, seven years Barkley’s senior.
Biden’s announcement that he was giving up on a second term echoed the classy selflessness of Barkley’s withdrawal. “The Veep” told the press, “If, by taking myself out of this race, I have contributed to the progress of the Democratic party and the future welfare of the United States, and, thereby, have rendered a service to my country, then I am most happy.”
On July 21, Biden wrote to the American people: “It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
Truman, according to Libbey, judged Barkley’s departure “the greatest and grandest exit a major withdrawing candidate could make.”
In the end, the Democrats nominated 52-year-old Gov. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, ironically Barkley’s distant cousin. In November, Stevenson lost in a landslide to Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, 62, who had been the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe in World War II.
The intellectual Stevenson — dubbed an “egghead” by his detractors — failed to fire up the Democratic faithful. Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden quickly endorsed for president, doesn’t have that problem so far, not by a longshot.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are rising in the polls against Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, his running mate. Evidently, the Harris-Walz team is also winning the hat wars.
“Mitch Cahn, president of the New Jersey-based supplier [Unionwear], says political hat sales can indicate the popularity of a candidate, noting that sales spiked after the Democratic presidential ticket changed,” wrote Phineas Hogan on asicentral.com. “This hat was an anomaly. In his 32 years making merch for presidential candidates, Mitch Cahn says he’s never seen such a sudden spike in sales.
“‘The numbers that they’re selling are the kinds of numbers we’ve seen for a political campaign, but over the course of months,’ says the president of Newark, NJ-based supplier Unionwear. ‘Not over the course of two days.’”
Added Hogan: “The Harris-Walz camo hat went viral when it was first announced at Kamala Harris’s and Tim Walz’s first rally together in Philadelphia on Aug. 8. Social media swooned over it. ... When the camo hat was released, Harris’s hat sales surged in popularity as she campaigned across the country. The numbers, Cahn says, are telling. ‘They just picked a great design that resonated with a lot of people. ... Baseball hats are definitely a great barometer.’”
I just checked the official Harris-Walz online store. Priced at $40 apiece, the hats are sold out.
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