U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson, known popularly as LBJ, sat at his desk in the Oval Office of the White House on the last day of March in 1968. There, he addressed the nation, opening his remarks by telling the American public, “Tonight I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.”
The country had been at war in Vietnam for years. Johnson had taken America’s involvement in the conflict he inherited from his slain predecessor, John F. Kennedy, from a robust and well-funded advisory mission to direct combat in which more than 58,000 American military members would die. Several million Vietnamese civilians and those in uniform in both the North and South perished.
Johnson, that evening, announced he was halting most of the U.S. military’s aerial attacks on North Vietnam. It was big news. Johnson’s speech, however, is remembered for the bombshell he dropped next: “I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
In that same room, the Oval Office of the White House, 56 years later, President Joe Biden explained why he also had decided to not seek another term.
“You know there is a time and a place, but there’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices, and that time and place is now,” Biden told the nation on the evening of July 24, 2024. He emphasized the last word in that sentence by jamming an index finger onto the oak surface of the Resolute Desk.
His words were no surprise. Biden, under intense pressure from his Democratic Party, had taken to social media the previous Sunday to announce he would not continue to seek re-election, although he had secured more than enough Democrats’ delegates - unlike Johnson, who had dropped out early in a contentious party primary process.
Johnson, like Biden, suffered from low popularity in the final year of his presidency. And Johnson’s fractured party eventually chose his vice president to be their candidate.
“I am ready to lead our country,” Vice President Hubert Humphrey told a chaotic 1968 national convention.
The majority of voters in the November election that year did not think so, electing Republican Richard Nixon instead of Humphrey.
This time, Democrats quickly united behind their sitting vice president.
“The momentum in this race is shifting,” Vice President Kamala Harris repeated within days at packed public rallies after being anointed by Biden as the heir apparent. Her confidence has rejuvenated the Democrats, helping to close what had been a widening lead in the polls for former President Donald Trump, whom the Republicans nominated for a third consecutive presidential election despite his being convicted of numerous felony counts for falsifying business records.
"In contrast to Humphrey, she has really been able, at least for the moment, to separate herself from that unpopularity, to kind of develop a political identity of her own and really recast the momentum of the election,” said Guian McKee, a professor of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, about Harris’ nascent presidential campaign.
Compared to the 81-year-old Biden, no one could credibly contend that Harris, 59, was in cognitive decline or unlikely to finish another full term because of the frailties of advanced age.
At the LBJ Presidential Library last month, Biden said he had long admired the late president’s public service, from rural Texas schoolteacher to senator, then vice president and president, noting Johnson had a simple philosophy: In a great society, “no one should be left behind.”
The accomplishments of Johnson’s Great Society - civil rights and voting rights laws, social welfare programs, federal funding for schools and some of the first significant anti-pollution legislation - were overshadowed by his losing efforts in an unwinnable war in Vietnam. In recent years, however, Johnson has climbed just ahead of James Monroe and Woodrow Wilson into the top quartile of historians’ rankings of America’s 46 presidents.
That 46th president, Biden, will be remembered for the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, as well as his climate change initiatives and revitalization of America’s industrial base. Biden’s larger legacy may hinge on the fate of his unfinished diplomacy in Ukraine and the Middle East.
“It depends on whether the accomplishments grow over time and outweigh the limitations of his record, and that will shape his historical legacy and his rank among American presidents,” McKee told VOA.
Biden’s decision is an extraordinary moment in American history because a president is not pursuing another term because of scandal or policy failure “like Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1968 with Vietnam. He’s deciding not to run with a very strong economy, with America actually in very good shape,” according to Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a center-left research institution.
Biden “is above the fray now” as a so-called lame duck, added McKee. But the presidential studies professor explained that status as a lame duck “might actually give him more efficacy in terms of actually executing the duties and responsibilities of the presidency than if he were a candidate.”
After he dropped out of the race, Johnson said he would do nothing during his remaining nine months in office except “trying to find peace” in Vietnam.
Biden departs in a little more than five months. Trump continues to criticize his successor, saying at a rally in Atlanta last Saturday that the president “was choking like a dog” when he was forced out of their rematch. Trump also quipped the Democrats carried out a coup, but Biden “didn’t know it.”
During the 1968 general election campaign, Nixon also criticized Johnson even though the sitting president was not his opponent. The Republican nominee told voters he had a better plan to end the Vietnam War than Johnson did and accused him of not doing enough to combat crime and civil unrest at a time of social upheaval.
The real reason Johnson dropped out of the race was that he was often seriously ill and Lady Bird Johnson, the first lady, feared her husband would not survive another term, according to the late research historian Vaughn Davis Bornet. Johnson died of what was probably his fifth heart attack in 1973 at age 65.
Johnson and Biden are not the only once-elected presidents who decided not to pursue an additional term. An exhausted and ill James Polk left in 1849 and died three months later. James Buchanan was unpopular and in poor health as the nation headed toward Civil War. In the 20th century, Calvin Coolidge was beset by personal depression and an economic one. Harry Truman decided to bow out early after an upset loss in the first primary amid the stalemate of the Korean War and a yearning to return to private life.
Many presidents who survive their time in office seem to struggle with that return to private life after their tenure as leader of the free world. Johnson could not abandon some of the trappings of power. He had a 7/8th scale replica Oval Office built for his retirement in Austin, Texas, which is now part of his official presidential library. Johnson also purchased a custom-built Lincoln limousine in which he continued to be chauffeured by Secret Service agents.
Biden will also have Secret Service protection until his death. For the 46th president, after a political career spanning a half-century as a senator, vice president and president, the most difficult thing to give up may be his influence and the ability to command history.
