Biden seeks to define his legacy in address explaining his campaign exit

President Biden plans to deliver a somber, reflective address from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening, speaking to the nation for the first time since his monumental decision to end both his reelection campaign and political career.

With less than six months left in his presidency, Biden is set to use the prime time address to defend his record, define his legacy and describe his vision for the rest of his term. With much of the country’s focus already shifted to Vice President Harris’s rapid ascent as Democrats’ likely presidential nominee, Biden intends to show Americans that he still plans to make an impact during his final months in office.

“There’s been a feeling that Joe Biden has disappeared from the scene and everybody is doing a eulogy for him,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “Yet he’s still our president all the way until January. He wants to use the prime-time television address to remind people that our country is still in good stead under his leadership.”

The speech will be the first opportunity for Biden to more fully explain why he decided to drop out of the race, a move that made him the first president since 1968 to voluntarily opt against seeking another term. In his letter making the announcement on Sunday, Biden offered few details on his thought process.

“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,” Biden wrote in the letter.

Previously, the 81-year-old Biden had dismissed questions about his advanced age and sluggish poll numbers, defiantly rejecting calls for him to step aside. His abrupt reversal upended an already turbulent campaign against Republican nominee Donald Trump, elevating Harris into the role of Democrats’ de facto leader.

As he adjusts to his new role as a lame duck, one-term president, there are signs that Biden is hoping to ramp up his presidential activity even as he prepares for the sunset of his half-century career in Washington.

“I won’t be on the ticket, but I’m still going to be fully, fully engaged,” Biden told a group of campaign staff on Monday. “I’m determined to get [as] much done as I possibly can — both foreign policy and domestic policy.”

In what could be a preview of his Oval Office address, Biden focused specifically on Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, where his administration has been pushing for a cease-fire agreement that would result in the release of hostages held by Hamas since last October. Efforts to secure such a deal have intensified in recent days, coinciding with Wednesday’s visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden has signaled that a hostage release — which would include several Americans — was on the “verge” of being a reality.

The president plans to meet with Netanyahu to discuss the cease-fire agreement on Thursday, a sign of the key role he would still play in world affairs.

“We’re still fighting in this fight together,” he told the campaign staffers on Monday. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Still, it is not clear how much his decision to bow out of the presidential race will change his schedule going forward. Biden, who was out of sight for five days as he recovered from covid, has continued to maintain a relatively light schedule. He had been set to travel to Texas, California and Colorado this week for campaigning and fundraising but canceled all of that travel. He plans to spend the weekend at Camp David, and aides said some of the canceled events would be rescheduled.

Republicans have responded to Biden’s exit from the race by calling on him to resign the presidency altogether, suggesting that if he is not capable of running a reelection race he should not remain in the White House. Some amplified conspiracy theories that he had died or was gravely ill.

Trump took to social media Tuesday to question whether Biden “is fit to run the U.S.A. for the next six months?”

Biden and his aides have forcefully pushed back on the idea that the president has been sidelined or otherwise diminished. The prime-time Oval Office address, just the fourth of his presidency, is designed to give the president a national platform to frame his time in office and tout his long list of accomplishments while also offering a boost to the woman who is now Democrats’ likely nominee.

Biden’s low-profile of late has had the effect of ceding the spotlight to Harris, who has been traveling the country to jump-start her presidential campaign. She used a keynote speech to more than 6,000 Black women on Wednesday to offer gratitude for his endorsement and to preview his speech.

“He will talk about not only the work, the extraordinary work that he has accomplished, but about his work for the next six months,” Harris told a gathering of the Zeta Phi Beta sorority in Indianapolis. “Joe Biden is a leader with bold vision. He cares about the future. He thinks about the future.”

In recent days, Harris’s campaign has been buoyed by a surge in enthusiasm, fundraising and support — all of which had been lacking in Biden’s campaign amid concerns about his age and health.

While the success or failure of Harris’s candidacy against Trump could determine the durability of Biden’s legacy and legislative record — much of which Trump has vowed to overturn in a second term — he must also grapple with the idea that his vice president has suddenly become a more influential figure in the Democratic Party.

But Biden’s decision to speak from the Oval Office, where presidents have often announced consequential developments on matters of domestic or global significance, highlights his ongoing role and powers, Brinkley said.

“He is a lame duck president legislatively, but he can still sign executive orders and be a world leader in trying to seek a cease-fire in the Middle East and continue funding to achieve liberation for Ukraine,” the historian noted. “He may have lost some stature here at home, but in the world of foreign policy, he’s more important than ever.”