Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race places him on a small list of U.S. presidents who were able to run again but chose not to.
Biden announced his withdrawal on Sunday, after weeks of pressure to step aside, forcing the Democratic party to weigh a new nominee to take on Donald Trump just months before the election.
“It simply is unprecedented for a party’s candidacy to kind of blow up in this way,” University of Toronto political science professor Ryan Hurl said.
Biden, 81, made the decision after a weak presidential debate performance that renewed questions about his age and ability to lead. Republican nominee Donald Trump is now the oldest presidential nominee in history at 78.
Biden is endorsing U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. She has received enough support from delegates to appear set to become her party’s nominee.
One-term presidencies can sometimes be associated with “failure” but Université du Québec à Montréal history professor Greg Robinson says Biden’s legacy may have been saved by the early exit.
“I think it’s a statesman-like action to bow out now,” Robinson said. “He would have looked awful being defeated on the basis of his age if he had run.”
While one-term presidencies are not rare, it’s relatively unusual in U.S. politics for an American president not to seek re-election.
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Here are others:
Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)
Harry Truman (1884-1972), U.S. President (1945-1953), 1945.
CP Images
Truman became president in December 1945, after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Truman led the U.S. through the end of the Second World War and approved the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
He was re-elected in 1948 but dropped out of the presidential race in 1952 because of his low popularity.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969)
FILE – This August 1967 file photo shows President Lyndon B. Johnson. (AP Photo, File).
(AP Photo, File)
Johnson took over in 1963 after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He went on to win the U.S. election the following year.
In 1968, at the end of a speech about the unpopular war in Vietnam, Johnson announced he would not seek another term.
Hurl says while current events can influence decision-making, sometimes it boils down to personal circumstances.
“It’s a mixture of individual choices and social forces beyond the control of any one given individual,” he said.
“We will not know how Biden would have fared if the aging issues were not quite so extreme.”
Unlike Biden, other “one-termers” including Jimmy Carter (1977 –1981), George H.W. Bush (1989-1993), and most recently, Donald Trump (2017-2021), sought re-election but were defeated.
“The truth is that running for president as an incumbent is a big advantage. And most incumbent presidents win. Donald Trump, even though he lost in 2020, came pretty close to hanging on,” North Carolina State University Prof. Steven Greene told Global News.
Biden’s withdrawal means “we’re going to have for the first time in many decades, a series of one-term presidents here,” Green said.
The announcement also caps off a tumultuous few weeks in U.S. politics.
Hurl points to the attempt on Trump’s life and Biden’s disastrous debate performance.
“In all of these shocking events, the shock of seeing an almost incapacitated Biden on stage during the debate was in some ways even more shocking than an assassination attempt,” he said.
— with files from Jackson Proskow
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