One Last Time: Biden Teaches Us How to Say Goodbye

And implores America to keep the faith.

The only thing missing was the call by Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler. (Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

I’ll always remember Joe Biden in Ballina.

It was nighttime. America’s last great Irish pol was visiting the county of his forebears. A bunch of local Irish notables gave boring remarks in front of an ancient stone church. There was a minute of restless silence. Then the music hit.

Suddenly the Dropkick Murphys are blaring from the speakers. Lasers and lights cut through the evening mist.

And Joe Biden strides out in a black longcoat like a damn WWE star to the single biggest pop I’ve seen in politics.

Absolute legend.

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That was 15 months ago. Only 15 month ago.

The President Biden we saw last night was a different man. We can all see the physical changes. But where the Biden in Ballina was exuberant, sharing a once-in-a-lifetime moment of pure joy, the Biden of last night was doing something different and infinitely more important. He was teaching his country a lesson.

It was, on the surface, a valedictory speech with boilerplate about what his administration accomplished. But under the hood, the important stuff wasn’t so much a valediction as a homily. He was talking directly to Americans not about the job he’d done, but about our jobs going forward.

Two sections are worth clipping and saving.

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The first was the part where Biden explained why he stepped aside:

When you elected me to this office, I promised to always level with you, to tell you the truth. And the truth, the sacred cause of this country, is larger than any one of us. Those of us who [cherish] that cause cherish it so much. The cause of American democracy itself. We must unite to protect it.

In recent weeks, it has become clear to me that I need to unite my party in this critical endeavor. I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.

So I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s the best way to unite our nation. I know there was a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. There’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.

I submit to you that no other president in our lifetimes would have believed that he was replaceable. None of those guys could have even countenanced the idea that the country might be better served if he passed the torch.

Biden’s humility in this act is so unique that we risk overlooking it and failing to appreciate how singular and extraordinary it is.

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The most important section, however, wasn’t about him. It was about us.

President Biden clearly explained to his fellow citizens that no leader, or party, or institution can save the Republic. The only thing that will save us, he explained, is us.

I ran for president four years ago because I believed and still do that the soul of America was at stake. The very nature of who we are was at stake. That is still the case. America is an idea. An idea stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It’s the most powerful idea in the history of the world. That idea is that we hold these truths to be self-evident.

We are all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. We’ve never fully lived up to it—to this sacred idea—but we’ve never walked away from it either. And I do not believe the American people will walk away from it now.

In just a few months, the American people will choose the course of America’s future. I made my choice. I’ve made my views known. . . .

Now the choice is up to you, the American people. When you make that choice, remember the words of Benjamin Franklin hanging on my wall here in the Oval Office, alongside the busts of Dr. King and Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez.

When Ben Franklin was asked, as he emerged from the convention going on, whether the founders have given America a monarchy or a republic, Franklin’s response was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” A republic, if you can keep it. Whether we keep our republic is now in your hands. . . .

The great thing about America is, here kings and dictators do not rule—the people do. History is in your hands. The power’s in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands. You just have to keep faith—keep the faith—and remember who we are. We are the United States of America, and there are simply nothing, nothing beyond our capacity when we do it together.

Keep the faith. Someday, hopefully far in the future, that should be Joe Biden’s epitaph: He kept the faith.

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Biden’s view of America as an idea is in tension with the Trump-Vance view of America as a thing, as a concrete entity rooted in blood and soil.¹

In the Trump-Vance view, because America is first and foremost a thing, it must have a master. It must be possessed. Ideas can be shared infinitely. Things exist in the world of zero-sum, where there are winners and losers.

For what it’s worth, at The Bulwark we subscribe to Biden’s view of America and we reject—utterly and completely—Trump’s blood-and-soil nationalism.

That is why we founded this project and it is why we do not wring our hands and pretend that both sides are terrible because we adhere to some True and Pure Faith which exists nowhere in vivo.

President Biden was right that there is not cavalry coming over the hill. The courts didn’t save us. Kamala Harris won’t save us. We are the ones who must save ourselves.

In our own small way, we’re trying to be part of that organizing effort. I hope you’ll join us.

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2. Goodbye

Last night was not Biden’s final goodbye. But it was his final great act as president. A moment when, for the first time in a generation, an American president became the moral leader of his country.

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It was impossible to watch Biden last night without thinking about George Washington’s farewell from Hamilton.

Or more specifically, the day in 2015 when Christopher Jackson sang “One Last Time” at the White House, for an audience that included Joe Biden.

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The first Baby Boomer president decided that the presidency was all about him. On the X’s and O’s of policy, Bill Clinton was a successful president. But along the way he disgraced the office and clung to power with an avarice and self-importance that progressed from unseemly, to destructive, to pathological.

He set a standard that other politicians would soon follow—the ne plus ultra being Donald Trump, whose desire to cling to power progressed from pathological, to criminal, to treasonous.

The lesson the Baby Boomer presidents taught us is that you must never give up. You should brazen it out. You can weather the storm. Any collateral damage caused by your refusal to yield power is just the price of doing business. Power, once grasped, should never be willingly surrendered.

Joe Biden has shown America a different path. He has shown that there is honor in letting go. That the true patriot yearns to see his country move beyond him.

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One last thing: I write a lot about gratitude because it is the most important of the virtues. Biden spoke about his own gratitude in way that is utterly foreign to recent presidents, who often seemed to believe that the country should be grateful to them.

My fellow Americans, it’s been the privilege of my life to serve this nation for over 50 years.

Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania and in Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as the president of the United States, but here I am.

That’s what’s so special about America. We are a nation of promise and possibilities. Of dreamers and doers. Of ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things. I’ve given my heart and my soul to our nation, like so many others. And I’ve been blessed a million times in return with the love and support of the American people. I hope you have some idea how grateful I am to all of you.

For all of these reasons and more, Biden is our greatest living president. And it’s not particularly close.

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3. Watch Talk

Last night Twitter created a conspiracy over Joe Biden’s watch, which was set to the wrong time or something . . .

More interesting to me is the watch Biden chose for the occasion. Because Biden is a watch guy and watch guys put thought into these choices. For the watch guy, your watch means something. You’re not throwing on a timepiece. You’re choosing a companion, a wingman, a talisman.

Last night, Biden wore a Rolex Datejust 41 with a smooth bezel and blue sunburst dial. It’s the most classic and low-key watch imaginable. Elegant, yet wholly unobtrusive.

More important, though, is the watch’s provenance. Biden’s Datejust was a gift from his wife. He wore it first on January 20, 2021, at his inauguration.

It is a lock that Biden chose his Datejust last night because he understood he was bookending his presidency. Bookending his professional life. And beginning the slow process of eclipse.

In such a moment, a watch guy would want the watch that means the most to him because it was given to him by the most important person in his world.

1. Vance said this, explicitly, in his convention speech:

You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty. Things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation. But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.

Now, it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms. That’s the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years past to hopefully 250 years in the future.

Read Cathy Young’s breakdown of Vance’s speech here.