Don't Worry: I Got Advice About Preserving My Legacy from Ruth Bader Ginsburg

A message from President Joe Biden

Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore.

It’s normal for someone my age to wonder how they’ll be remembered. Years from now, when people hear the name “Joe Biden”, what will they think? Will my name invoke a smile or a sneer? Call me vain, but I care.

Right now, my legacy seems pretty clear: I’m the guy who defeated Trump. History will likely remember Trump as the most venal and ignorant man to ever hold the office of President. His authoritarian behavior, exemplified by but not limited to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, threatened our democracy. And I beat him. I restored normalcy, sanity, and dignity to this country. As it stands, that is my legacy.

But recently I’ve been thinking…maybe I should keep going. What if my top-line biographical detail was not what I did in 2020, but rather what I do in 2024? Maybe I’m not fated to go down as “Joe Biden, lifelong civil servant who slayed the beast that threatened the American project.” Maybe my legacy is yet to be written! Put down your pens, historians — Joe Biden’s story is not done yet!

At the moment, a lot of people want me to call it a career. Recent polling makes it clear that my age is a major electoral liability, and many Democrats worry that my weakness as a candidate will open the door to a second Trump term. Many would like a different nominee, but most acknowledge that my determination to run scares away potential challengers. The only clean solution is for me to stand down. Luckily, I’ve imbibed the wisdom of one of the few people on Earth who has been in a similar spot: Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In early 2016, I was fortunate enough to share an audience with the esteemed Justice. She was 82, the same age I’ll be if sworn in for a second term. Trump was rolling to the nomination, and some Democrats wanted Ginsburg to retire so that Obama could appoint her successor. To be clear: These people largely shared Justice Ginsburg’s views. In fact, they lauded and respected her. They saw her as a champion of feminism and individual rights, and argued that having a president who shared her values appoint her successor would solidify the gains that she had worked so hard to secure.

I’ll never forget what the late Justice said to me. “Nah,” she said. “Nah fuck that fuckin’ shit.” (The former Justice was saltier in private than she was in public.) She elaborated: “I know that a bunch of libtards want Baby Ruth to take a dive, but homie don’t play that. They need to get their panties un-twisted. Because really: What are the odds that Trump will win and then I’ll die during his term and he’ll appoint a super-conservative 48 year-old who will undo everything that I worked for?”

A statistician might have answered that question with: “Far higher than you seem to believe.” But Justice Ginsburg was undeterred. She pointed out that she regularly worked out with two-pound dumbbells, which are known to neutralize cancer. She seemed frankly flummoxed by concerns about her age: “In what other context would people expect an 82 year-old who has gone through two bouts of pancreatic cancer to retire?” she wondered. “Hell, I’m in almost as good of shape as Scalia,” she said, “and he’s three years younger than me!” (Justice Scalia died an hour later.)

Naysayers would argue that Ginsburg’s argument was undercut by the fact that the worst-case scenario played out exactly as everyone warned that it might. They would point out that now, when many people hear the name “Ruth Bader Ginsburg”, they don’t think “pioneering jurist who changed America for the better” quite so much as “fool who selfishly tried to squeeze a few more years out of her career and wound up undoing just about everything that she worked for.” That’s one way to interpret her story. But I knew Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and when I recall the conversation that we shared, I hear her whispering in my ear: “Run, Joe, Run!”

Justice Ginsburg isn’t the only luminary who gave me advice: I was also lucky enough to talk to the great Michael Jordan. It was 1999, and Jordan had recently retired from the Chicago Bulls after six championships. His final basket was a title-clinching shot in the ‘98 Finals, which many considered to be the perfect capstone to one of the greatest careers in NBA history. “But I’m thinking of un-retiring to play three mediocre seasons for the Washington Wizards,” Jordan told me. “Here’s my plan,” he said, “Instead of going out on top, I’ll play a few injury-plagued years for an un-glamorous franchise and miss the playoffs each time. I’ll still be kind of good, but frankly not good enough to justify the amount of salary cap space I’ll take up, and I’ll also be locker room cancer. People will realize that my psychotically competitive personality is only tolerable when I can will my way to a championship, and when I retire for good, people will think ‘shoulda quit four years ago’.” That was Michael Jordan talking. So of course I took his words to heart.

I’ve heard similar perspectives from other people. George Lucas. Elvis. Bob Dylan. Jon Stewart. The people who make The Simpsons. Woody Allen. Brett Favre. Former Senate colleagues Strom Thurmond, Dianne Feinstein, and Robert Byrd. Why, just the other day, I was talking to Mitch McConnell, and he said “Don’t let anyone tell you when you’re done.” And, yes, there was an 18-minute pause between the words “you’re” and “done”, but his message still hit home.

Of course, none the people I just mentioned could really undo their legacy. But I still could! After all: I’m known for keeping Trump out of the Oval Office. It’s possible that — through a combination hubris and naïveté — I could mount a stunningly weak campaign that will give Trump a second term, when practically any mainstream Democrat would have beaten him. Polls suggest that’s a real possibility! And, in fact, Trump winning in 2024 would arguably be worse than if he had won in 2020, because he’s older, more erratic, and has spent the last four years figuring out how to remove the institutional constraints that checked his power before! It’d be like if Arrested Development didn’t just make seasons four through six, but actually traveled back in time to retroactively ruin seasons one through three as well!

It just seems weird for a president to step down. Name one president who did that. Okay, sure: George Washington. Washington willingly ceded power for the good of the nation — that’s his main legacy. And it’s the one thing that everyone — even his fiercest detractors — agrees was a momentous good. It’s the main reason why our nation’s capital is named for him, and why that city also has a huge marble obelisk erected in his honor, and why it also has a fresco called “Apotheosis of Washington” painted on the Capitol dome. So, it worked okay for Washington. But when I compare his choice to the one made by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it’s hard to know which path is best for my legacy.

I took two main lessons from my conversation with Justice Ginsburg: 1) Elections are extremely easy to predict, and 2) It’s also really easy to know whether you’ll live another four years. “I got this,” I recall her saying. “Tell your friend Barack to stop pissing his pants.” And she was so close to being right — so close to not having her ego unravel her life’s work in a way that was so tragic that it’s almost hilarious. And I’ve been inspired by her example. In fact, if I continue to follow her example, then whatever happens to my legacy should be considered part of her legacy, as well. You’re welcome, Ruth!

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***FOLKS!!! Jeff here. Quite a message from the President, no? Weird that he chose this blog to get his message out. Anyway: I want to make sure that everyone knows that I Might Be Wrong is now producing more content that you can access for $6 a month! This blog is a legit thing now — it’s a full-time publication. Which is probably why the president wrote to me begging me to publish this editorial (which I agreed to do for a handsome fee). I hope that you choose to upgrade to a paid subscription so that I can continue producing potty-mouthed political comedy from a wishy-washy, both-sidesing perspective. And thank you very much for reading!