Long ago, in a political galaxy far, far away, a young Barack Obama uncorked his first term presidential pen to sign the Affordable Care Act into law; an historic event made all the more memorable by his then vice president leaning forward and declaring into a hot mic, “This is a big fuckin’ deal man!”

That was my first time noticing Joe Biden. But as the years passed, I picked up little pieces of info in articles and interviews. His blue-collar upbringing, his stuttering problem as a child, the unimaginable tragedy of losing his first wife and daughter in a horrific car wreck, then losing his son Beau to cancer, and watching his other son Hunter succumb to addiction, sprinkle in a couple brain aneurisms along the way, and now this most recent very public decline… This is the human being behind the presidential seal. An American grandfather. An overcomer. The pride of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

It must have been extremely difficult for Joe to come to the conclusion that he was no longer the man for the job, to take the word of others when they told him he couldn’t win. After all, he’d been told this same thing for most of his life and had still risen to the most powerful office in the world.

Case in point: after serving two terms as Obama’s vice president, he was told not to run in 2016. His old boss supported Hillary that year . . . And the unthinkable happened—she lost to Donald Trump, a guy Biden went on to beat in 2020. And now in 2024 these same people are telling him he can’t win? I see why his initial reaction was “Watch me.”

In a more perfect world this elderly statesman, one of the last of his kind, would be treated with kindness by political opponents and allies alike as he makes his way through the last few months of a 50-year career in civil service. A farewell tour for an American legend. The 46th President of the United States.

With all the misinformation and political rhetoric of an election season, many of his administration’s triumphs have gone unnoticed. True enough, he gets an F on the southern border and an F on Afghanistan, but we dodged a recession that last year economists were saying was inevitable, our post-Covid economy is recovering faster than any other nation in the world, unemployment is at a record low, the stock market is hitting record highs, violent crime is down more than 20% from this time last year. Then there’s the Inflation Reduction Act that is simultaneously rebuilding the country’s crumbling infrastructure and the historic CHIPS Act that is designed to wrestle back the superconductor industry from overseas and stamp “Made in the USA” on the world’s microchips in the coming decade . . .

But Joe Biden’s greatest contribution to date might be his final contribution. Where his opponents would deny election results and stoke violence in efforts to cling to power, he released it in the best interest of democracy. We may be too close to see it right now. But somewhere down the winding road of history, some future historian might point to this very moment and describe it in Biden’s colorful language . . .

“This is a big fucking deal man!”

—July 21, 2024