Q&A With David Eisenhower on Biden’s Decision To Bow Out

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced his decision not to run for re-election and to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, adding drama to what was already a chaotic political summer in the wake of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Penn Today asked David Eisenhower, director of the Institute for Public Service at the Annenberg School for Communication to share his take on Biden’s move, Harris’ next steps, and what to expect from the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

Eisenhower grew up attending conventions—first for his grandfather Dwight D. Eisenhower and then his father-in-law, Richard Nixon. He now teaches an only-at-Penn course about conventions and takes students to both the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention.

Q: Some say that President Biden had no choice but to end his re-election campaign. Others are characterizing it as one of his most patriotic moves in a life of service. What is your take on his decision?

Biden does not feel that his job is done, so he is primarily dedicated to advancing that agenda and extending his administration’s hold on power, and he has conducted himself throughout 2024 with that overriding objective in mind. The fact that he took the position that he would never, never, never, never, never step down until the last minute is not at all surprising. That is what Truman did in 1952. That’s what Lyndon Johnson did in 1968.

And that’s important for Biden’s sole purpose, which is to retain control over his administration and over his policies, and so his intention was to either run himself or pass the nomination to a designated successor, and he has successfully done that.

Q: Harris hasn’t officially clinched the nomination, but all eyes are now on who her VP pick might be. How influential can a VP pick be for voters? What might she be looking for?

A VP can make a big difference. Sometimes, VP picks are not really supposed to add or detract; sometimes they’re supposed to assist in governing. I think Biden himself was that kind of pick in 2008. But you have instances like Lyndon Johnson in 1960 who really brought over the Carolinas, Texas, and a number of southern states that Kennedy needed. Agnew in 1968 was considered to be very effective in border states.

There are three types of VP picks. One is to do no harm. The second is to enhance a message that you’re trying to convey, and the third would be to bring in states. Maybe the ideal vice president would accomplish all three.

Harris might go for the type of VP that will add a state or reinforce. What I mean by reinforcement, is, for example, Bill Clinton in 1992 took Al Gore, who is from a nearby southern state, and he had a very similar background in every way to Clinton. What Clinton conveys by that pick is, ‘I’m a Boomer and the time has come to pass the torch to a Boomer generation.’ Gore reinforced the message.

Q: Why has something like this never happened before? How much does it shake up the race?

I don’t see him as having done anything unusual here. It’s late in the process, but I think it maximizes President Biden’s control over the process. It’s been very impressive the way the Democratic Party has lined up behind Harris. I would say if this had happened three or four months ago, you would have had a very different kind of contest, and I know some wish that had happened.

Again, what I see is that President Biden has convictions about problems facing the country and what needs to be done about those problems. He has an agenda; he has a team in place, and he is determined to strengthen his hand over the national agenda. His actions are consistent with that. Sometimes that involves relinquishing power and stepping aside, and at times it involves re-election.

Biden was going to use the power he had to ensure that an administration candidate was picked. I don’t see it as unprecedented. I see it as surprising, and it’s always surprising when a president steps aside because the president is a big figure. We organize our political thinking around what a president is doing. A president has a presence everywhere. 

Take 1940. You had Franklin Roosevelt, and as the Democratic convention opens Roosevelt is not the formal candidate. He’s going to force the Democratic Party to draft him. So, you could say in the summer of 1940, the majority of the Democratic Party did not have a plan and Roosevelt’s bid created that sense of the unknown.

I think that any change is a surprise, but I’ve been studying presidents for a long time. I go back to when, in 1968, I was the age of the undergraduate students I currently teach. We had a very similar situation with Lyndon Johnson, and I just remember the evaluations of people that I knew at that time, presidents Nixon and Eisenhower, and they both understood exactly what Johnson was doing. I think the political class generally understood what he was doing. Of course, Johnson’s maneuver in 1968 came as a great shock to the American people and Democrats, but I think transitions are surprising.

Q: What does a traditional convention look like and does this news change that?

The nomination function of the convention is something that has changed in my lifetime and the author of that change is Geoff Cowan. He’s essentially the force behind America's embrace of the so-called primary system. He is now a professor at the University of Southern California, former dean of the Annenberg School there, and we work together on these convention classes. The primary system has diminished the role of conventions as a nominating activity and enhanced it as a sort of infomercial.

In fact, my wife (Julie Nixon Eisenhower) and I, probably along with my brother-in-law, sister-in- law, maybe one or two others, are the last people to actually have been in the room with the candidate at a national political convention when that candidate did not know he was the nominee of the party when the balloting began. We haven’t had anything like that since 1968.

So, I would say the conventions that we’re seeing right now are an opportunity for professionals to come together, and coalitions to come together. They hammer out a program before the convention and then celebrate that with the events that are broadcast to the public.  That is the boilerplate.

Conventions do vary in effectiveness and in style and by type. The thing we look at conventions are, No. 1, is this party genuinely united? And No. 2, is this party an incumbent or challenger? And generally looking at conventions through the prism of those two variables, you come up with different types of conventions and you can evaluate their effectiveness that way.

We’re just back from Milwaukee with a group of students and saw a very united and confident Republican Party. This is one thing that makes 2024 unique. The Republicans are enjoying a type of quasi-incumbency status. Democrats are incumbents as well. It’s rare to have two incumbent parties facing each other, but strangely that is what we have this year.

What do you think is the most important thing for people to understand about this moment?

You would not have seen a drama like the one we’ve had this summer unless very important things were at stake between the two parties. The American people need to understand that the parties are working very hard to present acceptable alternatives, and they’re both acting as though this is going to be yet another close election.

What Biden’s action does is it underscores the flexibility, the responsiveness of our system to an ever-changing environment. I think that Biden reached the conclusion about what would work best for the Democratic cause this fall. He did it, and we have a system that affords that opportunity. This rejuvenates the contest, and we’re going to have a very, very interesting and engaging fall.