Biden's Memoir Defends 2024 Run, Recounts Debate Fallout and Faults Netanyahu

In a meeting at the White House in 2023, Joe Biden writes, he went around the room and asked his top advisers whether he should run again. Everyone was in, he recalls. No one demurred. The TV ads and the announcement were already prepared. That scene anchors the defense of his 2024 re-election bid in his new memoir, "Promise Me, America," a 480-page book due out Tuesday, roughly the midpoint of what would have been his second term.

The former president is 83 and has aggressive prostate cancer, and he has scaled back promotion of the book because of his condition. The decision to run, which many in his party now regard as a mistake, is something he does not concede. He was past his 80th birthday, his approval rating was sagging, and he had once described his presidency as a bridge to the next generation of Democrats. He writes that he was on top of the issues and had shown strength in the primaries, where he glided past Dean Phillips, a long-shot third-term congressman from Minnesota. Kamala Harris, in her own memoir last year, "107 Days," called his decision "recklessness" and said she should "perhaps" have advised against it, though she also wrote that she was in the worst position to make that case.

On the June 2024 debate against Donald Trump, Biden is more candid in private recollection than in public posture. At a watch party afterward, Jill Biden told him he had answered every question and knew all the facts, while he looked on, half-smiling. He writes that he told her privately that he had screwed it up, and says his actual language was harsher. He knew onstage, he writes, that he was having a terrible night. He also asked Ron Klain for an assessment and got a two-word reply: "Not good." He explains his garbled line, "We finally beat Medicare," which drew Trump's retort that he "beat it to death," as a slip: he meant Big Pharma.

On his book tour, though, he has played the debate down. He told People magazine it did not disturb him because it was not consequential. In the book he argues that Trump's answers about January 6 and his refusal to commit to accepting the election results were disqualifying, and that other presidents have had bad debates too. The difference, he writes, is that they got a second debate to redeem themselves. He did not. The performance set off a month of Democratic anguish before he left the race.

The pressure that pushed him out is recounted in detail. About a week before he withdrew, Chuck Schumer came to Biden's Delaware beach house and, in an emotional conversation, urged him to step aside. Biden writes that he told Schumer he had a lot of gumption, perhaps in stronger terms, adding, "Loyalty matters to me." Nancy Pelosi told him no polls showed he had any chance. Then he learned Patty Murray planned to release a letter showing major Democratic defections, which weighed on him because few leaders had so far put their names to a call for him to go. A representative for Schumer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Biden frames it as a dilemma. Was he old? Yes. Could he do the job? Yes. Voters were angry about inflation and immigration, but those were not insurmountable problems, he writes, and he believed the rank and file were still with him. Eight days after the Schumer meeting he withdrew, citing "so many major voices in our party" determined to force him out. Harris asked him several times whether he was sure; when he said yes, she asked him to endorse her immediately rather than later, and about 20 minutes on he agreed. He later patched things up with Pelosi over lunch at an Italian restaurant, saying they had been through too much together to leave a rift unmended.

He is sharpest about Benjamin Netanyahu, whose war in Gaza after the October 7, 2023, attacks proceeded with U.S. support and split Democrats, angering some in his own administration. Biden describes a familiar pattern: he pressed Israel to prevent civilian casualties, Netanyahu promised to do more, and then another aggressive action followed, killing more civilians. "Bibi," he writes, had no qualms about making promises he had no power or intention to keep. The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The book also has a lighter moment. A year into his presidency, Senator Mitt Romney, four years younger, toured the White House and told Biden to pump his arms when he walked, since holding them stiffly at his sides made him look less energetic. Biden writes that he tried to follow the good advice. With his health limiting his appearances, the reactions of Harris, Schumer, Pelosi and Netanyahu's government to the book are what to watch.