David M. Shribman

There is a subterranean conversation going on in the United States that every one of the country’s 500 or so political insiders is conducting, but that none of the rest of the 332 million Americans has heard. For the time being, that conversation is meaningless. But if it becomes consequential, it will reach the ears of everyone, change the course of global history, reshape the character of the Democratic Party, perhaps affect the nature of the Republican Party, and surely overhaul all the knowns (and create new unknowns) about the 2024 election.

That clandestine conversation is about a subject that dare not speak its name inside Joe Biden’s White House. His aides have heard it and, from time to time, they have joined it. Democratic operatives have refined it. Republicans have wondered how it might affect their campaign, whether it might enhance or diminish the chances of Donald J. Trump returning to the White House.

The contents of the conversation have not been made public. But at the center of it is an unlikely and hypothetical, but sagacious, address to the electorate:

My fellow Americans,

I’m speaking to you from the White House, where so many important decisions in our history have been made and where so many await resolution in our own time. Presidents — like James K. Polk, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and both Bushes — have brought the country into war here. Presidents — like Wilson, Harry Truman, and, in some respects, Richard Nixon — have settled for peace here. 

It is no revelation to you that I have sought this office since I was 45 years old. It has been my life’s ambition to serve the country we love, to help shape it, to make it strong enough that its war-making powers assure peace, that its economic prosperity eliminates poverty, that its magnificent landscape, which provided succor for Indigenous peoples and unmatched prosperity for those who followed into this rich continent, is preserved.

And we — the remarkable people who work with me in the White House — have had substantial success in reaching those goals. We have passed legislation that has eased the burdens of the poor and the striving. We have taken the country out of the peril of COVID. We have proceeded down the road of preserving the climate and husbanding our resources. We have created a brighter present and set the path toward a shining future for all Americans — and we have done so by respecting our differences and embracing all the elements of the stunning American rainbow.

More than a half-century ago, in a period when, like today, Americans were divided over fundamental questions about our national character, the American lifestyle, the purpose of politics and our involvements overseas, a brave American president facing a re-election campaign went before the country and said his dedication to the task that faced him — shoring up the American economy and bringing to an end the war in Vietnam — was so daunting, so important, so requiring of his full attention, that he could not contemplate using even a single moment of the 10 months that remained in his term in a political campaign. The issues were so pressing, so difficult, so demanding, that it would be selfish for him to put his own political interests ahead of the interests of the nation.

And so today, when cynicism about public life is rife in both major parties, and when the very values of our democratic government are at stake, I, like President Lyndon Johnson before me, shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.

President Johnson served during a period of great divisions. His approval ratings were low for his time, though I would be delighted to reach his levels. But I have learned — it has been a hard lesson for me — that there is more to the presidency than popularity. I have learned, in three years in this office and 36 in the Senate, the preciousness of the democratic way of life and the democratic way of governing. I fear both are at stake in our own time.

In the months that remain in my term, I am dedicating myself to helping to solve the crisis in the Middle East, to buttressing the brave efforts of the Ukrainian combatants as they fight for their survival, and to assuring that our economy flourishes and our climate is saved. That is a full agenda, one demanding my full attention, and I ask for your support.

There is another element that cannot be ignored. I was born in the year 1942. The United States had not been in World War II for even a full year. There was no television, certainly no social media. To communicate, we had party lines, not cellphones. The Battle of Guadalcanal had just ended. The movie “Casablanca” would come out days later. Within weeks, coffee and gasoline would be rationed. I grew up in a different world.

I was 17 — a young man — when John F. Kennedy was elected president. He ran on the theme of a “new generation of leadership.” He was 43. He succeeded a beloved president who was 70. Once again, it is time for a new generation of leadership.

This is not the occasion for partisan attacks. It is an occasion for the celebration of democracy and for me, as your president, to rededicate myself and, with your help, the country, to the great task remaining before us, that we take increased devotion to that cause for which so many Americans gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that those dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

That thought was first expressed by the greatest of our presidents, Abraham Lincoln, and now a Democratic president is pleased — is proud — to paraphrase the remarks of a Republican president. This is how our politics — how our country — should proceed. I invite you to join me on this path of national reconciliation, a path I pledge I will tread without recourse to partisanship. We have work to do, and a country to preserve.

May God bless you and bless the United States of America and our brave troops overseas.

A Swampscott High School Class of 1972 member, David M. Shribman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.