Editor’s note, April 25, 10 am ET: President Biden has announced his decision to run for reelection. Our original story, published on March 1, follows.
I’ve written some hot takes in my time, and this is not one of them. This is an unbelievably cold take, a zero Kelvin take.
My argument in this piece is simple: Joe Biden, the incumbent president of the United States, should run for reelection.
Just six presidents out of the previous 45 have chosen not to run for reelection. The last two who didn’t, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson, were accidental presidents who ascended due to the previous president’s death (though they did each win a general election outright), and both were embroiled in brutal and increasingly unpopular wars at the time they declined to run.
You have to go back to Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 for a situation that would be analogous to Biden declining to run for reelection — a president who won election in their own right and then chose not to run again — and Hayes had pledged in his 1876 campaign to only serve one term.
So why is “Joe Biden should run for president” even worth saying? For one thing, because less than two years before 2024’s Election Day, he’s not running yet. Politico reported last week that Biden has yet to make a final decision on whether to seek reelection, and while most people in his orbit are absolutely confident he will run eventually, that tiny glimmer of a doubt enables all manner of speculation.
Does that mean anything, anything at all? Probably not! As first lady Jill Biden told the Associated Press last week: “He says he’s not done. How many times does he have to say it for you to believe it?”
Still, the persistence of the “Will he run?” question has a basis in something more solid than the bored speculation of DC reporters. Biden was the oldest person ever elected US president, breaking Donald Trump’s record by over seven years. Because of the linear nature of time, he would…
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