FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
NEW YORK – “You haven’t aged a day.” That’s how Vietnamese Secretary General Nguyen Phu Trong praised Biden in recent days during the American president’s trip to Hanoi. “In fact, you look even better than before.”
Unfortunately for Biden, not everyone at home feels the same way. And among them is David Ignatius, 73, a respected, well-connected Washington Post columnist who published a widely read article titled, “President Biden Should Not Run in 2024.”
An article that is not surprising: it simply expresses what has been discussed for months in the media, in Washington and – writes Ignatius – “not only on Fox News, but at the dinner table in every home in America” and what is happening in the Polls clearly reflect voters’ (including Democrats’) concerns about the age of the president, who is running for a second term.
When Biden fell on a sandbag during a ceremony at West Point, or when he appeared visibly exhausted at a press conference in Vietnam (at the G20 summit, a European diplomat told us that his fatigue was evident at the summit), the issue resurfaces , although some criticized the New York Times headline about “an octogenarian’s stormy trip” to India and Vietnam, noting that journalists were more jaded than the president.
But Ignatius, the Axios website notes, is one of those old columnists — along with Tom Friedman and David Brooks — that Biden likes to read.
But who knows whether what he says to him now will make him think: The White House is repeating that the president has now decided to stay in the race.
The columnist praises Biden for the historic legislation passed in his first term, for the party’s victory in November’s midterm elections, for governing as a centrist and for defending Ukraine without sending America straight into war with Russia For a second term, the president risks “destroying his greatest achievement, which was to stop Trump.”
Biden “has never been good at saying no,” notes the journalist, who remembers him as “the talkative friend” of Congress where he met him forty years ago, but observes how he has become a president with great ” Focus and strategy, both at home and abroad.”
Ignatius states that in 2019 he was certainly the right person to win “the battle for the soul of this nation,” but this time he should say “no to himself” and withdraw from the race for the presidency in 2024 , because “it would be the wisest choice for the country.”
Ignatius explains that Biden has about a month to make this decision, otherwise it would be too late for potential Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, who is less popular than him (at 39.5% according to the FiveThirtyEight website). , to test themselves in the primaries and “see if they have what it takes to be president.”
Of Harris, Ignatius writes: “He has many praiseworthy qualities, but the fact is that he has failed to win support in the country and not even in his own party.” Given Biden’s age, the journalist adds, voters will become hers Pay attention to them.
Ignatius notes that there is also another path: choosing a different vice president (something that has also been suggested to him by others in recent months), which could include Karen Bass, the African-American mayor of Los Angeles, as alternatives Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who was also among the names Biden himself initially considered for the vice presidency. But Harris’ removal could provoke negative reactions from some voters.
Among the things that Biden should have said no to, according to the journalist, were, first and foremost, the choice of Harris as deputy (“she was a friend of his beloved son Beau,” who died of brain cancer) and also Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan and her son Hunter’s involvement in companies in Ukraine and China (and the calls she made as vice president and put him on speakerphone to impress the people he worked with).