The Agony and the Ecstasy of Joe Biden’s Convention Speech

The highlight of virtually every political convention is the acceptance speech by the presidential nominee. Standing in a hall before a rapturous audience and millions more watching at home, a potential president has an unobstructed chance to argue the case for their candidacy.

But this year is different.

The sheer drama of Monday’s speech by President Joe Biden, following his decision to step aside and cede the nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris after weeks of mounting pressure, will be unlike anything ever seen. His party is electric with a sense of possibility and hope. The ticket is climbing ahead in the polls. At any other convention in history, it’d be a triumphant moment for the president. But every cheer Biden hears, every smile he sees, every fist raised in celebration will express enthusiasm for a political future without him.

It’s a bizarre inversion of a typical convention, full of conflicting emotions for the speaker. The happier Democrats look in Chicago, the prouder Biden must be — and the more it must hurt.

Consider what might be going through his mind. He came to the presidency with the grateful thanks of Democrats, having deposed former President Donald Trump from the White House. He arrives in Chicago as the first president since Chester Arthur to be denied the nomination of his party for a second term. (President Lyndon Johnson stepped down in 1968 facing a threat to his nomination, but never formally entered the contest.)

He knows he will be followed on the next nights by the last two Democratic presidents — both two-term victors, both gifted with oratorical skills he simply does not possess, both of whom participated in the push to drive him off the ticket. He also knows they are far more popular figures, despite the fact that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama presided over midterm disasters, while under Biden’s watch, Democrats had their best midterm with a Democrat in the White House since FDR.

He will be greeted by ovations from the delegates, almost all of whom voted for him in the primaries. But many of the cheers will come from a sense of relief that the party does not have to march to November behind his standard. Biden must feel the outpouring of celebration that greeted his replacement, even if it’s accompanied by thanks for his sacrifice, as something of a wound.

It is a sharp contrast to how outgoing presidents are usually greeted at a convention. Think of Ronald Reagan, Clinton, Obama, each of whom was greeted at the convention by adoring delegates. (George W. Bush, by contrast, was so unpopular in 2008 that the convention used the excuse of a threatened hurricane to cancel the night he was supposed to speak; there was no move to reschedule.)

Without question, there will be many in the hall who will celebrate an impressive array of legislative victories, which Democrats achieved despite the party’s paper-thin margins in Congress. There will also be some, like former adviser Anita Dunn, who blame Biden’s decision to step aside on the press and party insiders .

Does Biden himself share those sentiments?

We will probably not find out from his speech. Biden based his successful 2020 campaign and his erstwhile bid for a second term on the idea that the very soul of the nation is at stake — that Trump represents a clear and present danger. That, and his first-term successes, will likely form the heart of his speech.

But for the political figure who emerged on the national stage at age 29, who has focused on the goal of the presidency for half a century, who was looking to another term as vindication, his appearance Monday night must seem less a celebration and more of a torment.