President Biden has always had a complicated relationship with words. As a child, he overcame a stutter by reading Irish poets and practicing conversations ahead of time to work out the right phrases. As an up-and-coming senator, he won praise from senior colleagues for his rhetorical flourishes — until his first presidential campaign was derailed by accusations that he stole someone else’s words and used them as his own.
This year, his bid for reelection was ultimately and irrevocably derailed by his inability to find the right words in a 90-minute debate. The man who long prided himself on carefully crafting his words — who has given eulogies and commencement addresses, spoken at political rallies and delivered more Senate floor speeches than anyone could reasonably count — struggled to find the ones he needed, and that failure cost him the right to fight for the job he had long coveted and finally achieved.
The man who had his eye on the presidency since he was a child, the man who thought about running almost every four years since he was eligible and the man who finally won at age 77 ended his reelection campaign after members of his own party said he was struggling to effectively communicate.
The politician once beloved for his unscripted moments has recently relied more on teleprompters. The politician who spoke from the gut — so much that he was caught on a microphone telling Barack Obama, “This is a big [expletive] deal” — has instead been more halting in trying to speak his own mind.
Public speaking has long been an organizing element of Biden’s life. For decades, he has used speeches not just to ask for votes or outline policy, but also to express his grief, vent his emotions and speak his mind bluntly. Public events have indicated to him when his arguments are moving a crowd — and when he’s struggling to connect.
“Probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me was one of the worst things,” Biden said a few months ago on a podcast hosted by Anderson Cooper that explores grief. “When I was a kid, I stuttered badly — t-t-t-talk-talk like-like that — … and I used to hate the fact I stuttered.”
When he had a paper route, Biden has said, he would work out conversations in his head before he got to someone’s door to avoid tripping over his words. He would read poetry — the same Irish poets he would later quote as president — to sound out the words.
He recalled being embarrassingly exempted from a public speaking assignment as a high school freshman. “But I realized it was a great lesson I learned, because everybody has something they can’t fully control — everybody,” Biden told Cooper. “And so it turned out to be a great gift for me that I stuttered.”
The stutter gave Biden a political gift, providing him with his ability to connect with voters. His calling card — empathy — allowed him to forge connections with voters in his Delaware home base and to endear himself to the lions of the U.S. Senate who took the young Biden under their wing.
Biden has described his childhood experience as central to his sympathy for those less fortunate. His mother instilled in him that he was never allowed to make fun of anyone for something that they could not overcome.
Biden not only learned to work around his stutter but entered a profession that would demand endless public speaking.
From the start of his career, Biden viewed himself as an orator, and when he came to the Senate in 1973, others agreed. After his first floor speech, Sen. John C. Stennis (D-Miss.) wrote him a letter: “You stood tall, like a stone wall. Like Stonewall Jackson.”
To this day, he says one of his favorite movies is “The King’s Speech,” which depicts the ascent to the throne of King George VI of Britain, who must overcome a speech impediment and address the country during World War II.
Biden’s approach to speaking has often been to draw on his emotions and telegraph empathy, to be granular and simple, to tell a story.
He has a distinctive way of talking — “Folks!” “Not a joke!” “Here’s the deal!” “C’mon, man!” — and he is known to unspool adages that purport to be Irish proverbs or family sayings. He is a self-described gaffe machine whose off-the-cuff remarks could be both endearing and problematic.
His presidential campaign in 1988 was derailed when he was accused of plagiarizing part of a speech, and since then, he has been careful to attribute even the most mundane phrases (“As the old saying goes, ‘give me a break,’” he once said).
He spends hours — or days — preparing for speeches, but some of his better moments have come from words that he never wrote down.
That was the case for remarks he would give standing with Obama, celebrating the signing of the landmark health-care law. Every word was planned, particularly for Biden, the least-scripted member of the administration.
His staff worked into the night crafting a speech that included a quote from Virgil, a nod to history, and praise for the president. But all anyone remembered from that day was a single off-color, off-the-cuff phrase, one Biden intended to whisper to Obama but was caught on mic: “This is a big [expletive] deal.”
As the old joke goes, writing a speech for Biden is one of the hardest jobs in American politics. For most of his career, he has been allergic to following a teleprompter, frequently veering from the prepared text and at times walking himself into verbal cul-de-sacs. In later years, he has at times rapidly shifted the volume of his voice, from a stage whisper to a loud shout.
But he has always known the importance of words, and how they can influence and motivate people.
“The words of a president matter,” he said more than once during his 2020 presidential campaign. “They can move markets. They can send our brave men and women to war. They can bring peace.”
During his time as president, his aides have tried to prevent him from veering from any prepared text. They cut off questions from reporters and try to game out ahead of time what questions might be asked. More recently, in a physical manifestation of the type of accommodation they have made for an aging president, they added teleprompters even to his most intimate events, where he speaks to a group of 30 donors in a living room.
But on the evening of June 27, when Biden spoke early in a debate that his campaign had hoped would showcase his strength and wherewithal, words finally failed him.
He began talking about the national debt, then turned to the tax system, eventually vowed to strengthen health care — and then apparently was uncertain where to go next.
“Making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the, with the covid,” he said. “Excuse me, dealing with everything we have to do with … Look … if …”
After a few silent seconds, he offered, “We finally beat Medicare.”
White House aides said later that he meant to say “Big Pharma,” but the remark still would not have made much sense.
The debate created a flood of concern from within the Democratic Party. More officials came forward to say they, too, had witnessed odd mental lapses by the president. He gave speeches, attended rallies and sat for interviews. Each of those seemed to work to convince himself that he could still do the job — that the debate really was just “a bad night” — but each also seemed to further exacerbate his party’s worries that he could no longer win the election.
Much of Biden’s political identity is wrapped up in the idea that he overcomes setbacks and refuses to give in. The decision he made Sunday cut against that notion that, as he has said many times, “When you get knocked down, you get back up.” But he has also prided himself on having a political antenna that he used to devote the final chapter of his life to defeating Donald Trump. In some ways, his decision amounted to just that: coming to the conclusion that he no longer is the person best politically positioned to defeat Trump.
Twenty-four days after the debate, he would conclude that he was no longer the best option. And at 1:46 p.m. on Sunday, he released a 324-word letter to the American people.
“While it has been my intention to seek reelection,” he wrote, “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.”
Four times he has given presidential announcement speeches, and once he’s given an acceptance speech. Twice before he has given a withdrawal speech. Now, on Wednesday evening, he will give a third.