THERE IS NO PLAYBOOK FOR NAVIGATING the post-presidency, especially in this modern era. For President Joe Biden, the story of his life has been one of getting back up: after his wife and daughter died, after two failed runs for president, after losing Beau, after navigating Hunter’s challenges, and now after leaving the presidency in a way he had not planned.

There is also no real playbook for a hack after the presidential run either. And like so many who love the Boss, his appearance on The View last week just didn’t feel right.

Ten years ago, I found myself landing in Bidenworld after opening my mouth to say a few things others were thinking. Now, out of my admiration for the Boss, I will open my mouth one last time: I like, respect, and admire Joe Biden, and I have a hunch that over time, history will treat much of his presidency well. At the same time, I wish he would stop litigating it. It isn’t helping.

To know Joe Biden is to know he’s a scrapper. His instinct when punched in the mouth is to punch back. So I genuinely understand his desire to use his voice now as he comes under heightened scrutiny and attack.

I also get that these are unprecedented times. As citizens, we only have two real ways to cause change: our voice and our vote. President Biden, like the rest of us, is a citizen. He knows he is the only man who has beaten Donald Trump—and beat him with a broader national popular vote win than President Trump’s supposedly massive mandate in 2024.

Finally, I get the legacy issue. We all fight for our legacy. It’s simple human nature. In Joe Biden’s mind, there was no playbook where the presidency ended like it did, with him stepping away from the one final fight. Getting up off the mat is the thing that not only defines his career but defines him as a person. It drives him.

I have had the privilege of seeing this up close.

Nearly ten years ago, sitting on my couch nursing a cracked tibia, I decided to send then-New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin a text. It was early August 2015, and there was some chatter that Joe Biden had restarted his consideration of running for president in 2016. I had grown to like Biden, having spent a fair amount of time with him during the two Obama–Biden campaigns in Florida.

I was in the camp that was concerned Hillary Clinton could not win, that her negatives were too baked-in, particularly with some of the white working-class voters we needed. Living in Florida, it wasn’t hard to see the impact Trump was having on our coalition.

Long and short of it, JMart had either written or tweeted something suggesting it was too late for Biden to get in. I didn’t agree and sent him a text suggesting that with nearly universal name ID, Biden had a unique ability to get in late and shake up the race. I also argued he was a more electable candidate against Trump.

Thirty minutes later, he posted something to the New York Times. That evening I found myself on TV. And after a little encouragement from a few people close to Biden, off my life went.

I spent most of the next five years committed to the mission of electing Joe Biden president. I spent months working on and talking about what a 2016 race would look like. I was part of a small crew of volunteers who helped on the post-presidency PAC, American Possibilities (the OG of OGs, as Biden’s longtime aide Greg Schultz called us). I staffed the Boss a bunch in Florida, and then ran his 2019–20 primary super PAC, which raised nearly $100 million in support of his successful candidacy.

I felt immense pride (and a small bit of vindication) when he took the oath of office.

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PEOPLE WHO RUN FOR PRESIDENT are not wired like the rest of us. I’ve had the honor to work for two of them, and a chance to meet many others.

A few years back, Nikole (my wife) and I were in Boston and went to see former Gov. Michael Dukakis at his home for afternoon coffee. Sitting around his kitchen table, one thing was clear: That 1988 race was still as fresh in his mind as it was the day he ran it. For example, he asked me about specific counties in Florida, and remembered what his margins had been. He may have moved on to other things in his life—but over that race, he was not.

I’ve also never met a candidate for president who thought they would lose. That included Biden in 2016, even though he decided not to run. I remember the pain in his voice when he called to say he wasn’t going to do it. In those times I saw him during the 2016 general election, he felt confident the race wouldn’t be close if he were in. You knew it bothered him that the window had seemingly closed.

And then it opened up again.

In 2020, after virtually every pundit and smart guy told him he would fail—often in the snarkiest of terms—Biden did something only thirty-nine other Americans in history had done: He was chosen by his fellow citizens to serve as their president (as opposed to assuming office only through a predecessor’s resignation or death). He earned the right to have a little chip on his shoulder.

I AM NOT HERE TO LITIGATE the Biden presidency. I didn’t work in the White House—in fact, in four years, I never went there. I believe he did a lot of good things. But I also think missteps were made.

I believe he should have taken a one-term pledge. I felt this way in 2016 and again in 2020. I believe had he offered a one-term pledge in 2020, he would have won by a larger margin that year. We often gloss over how much his age was a real issue in 2020. It just wasn’t as big of an issue as Trump. I also believe Biden should have announced in the middle of his term that he wasn’t going to run again (and I often wonder what would have happened had the 2022 elections turned out differently). If he had, and done this in a way that talked about the realities of aging in the modern presidency, I don’t think we’d be having the conversation about his frailties that is happening today. Rather, I believe the vast majority of Americans would have understood, and even praised him for his honesty.

But for all my decades as a hack, I’m mindful of the fact I am not the person putting my name on the line. It is easy for me to say all of the things above. Leaving the presidency early is not something that is in the DNA of the people who seek it. And folks are mistaken when they argue Biden said he would serve one term; when he actually said was that he would be a “transition president.” He’s just like everyone else who has ever sat at that desk—none of them wants to leave before the job is done.

My side had spent most of Trump’s first term assuming he would lose re-election. But Biden had understood how hard it would be. He also understood why voters had put him there. The foundation he could always fall back on—particularly when compared to Trump—was that people perceived that he “cared about people like us,” “understands the middle-class family,” and “has the right priorities.” Those characteristics didn’t disappear from Biden. But by 2022, thanks to things both inside and out of the White House’s control, the voters’ perceptions of them had.

Biden was significantly upside down when it came to most of those traits. And like it or not, his age not only factored into it—it drove his negatives. It came up in every focus group. We saw it in every poll.

In fact, even after the Dobbs decision helped bail out my party in 2022, Biden’s numbers really never moved. I am afraid those closest to him read 2022 as vindication, that the results helped to give them the boost they felt they needed to push ahead toward re-election. But when I look back at his favorables in swing states, voters had largely made up their minds, and not in a good way. No stock market number was going to change it.

Biden made the right decision last July when he decided to not run for re-election. I disagree with his assessment that he would have won in 2024, but as I stated earlier, I understand his view on it. I’ve never met a principal that didn’t think they would have won the race they didn’t run.

That said, the polling we did in July 2024 made clear that not only was there no pathway, we likely would have lost more seats in the House and in the Senate. I am not sure Biden would have gotten to 200 electoral votes. Should he have made the decision earlier? Sure, that’s really easy to say now. But he made the right call.

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IT HAS BEEN SAID OF BIDEN THAT empathy is his superpower, and it’s true. People would often approach him like a member of the family, seeking advice, counsel, or just a strong shoulder.

I remember in 2018, we were at a rally at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. The crowd had long left, he had spent a long time on the rope line, he had done a bunch of press, and none of us had eaten in many hours.

But as the staff there looked around, there was a problem: We didn’t know where the principal was (I had failed Rule One of staffing—don’t lose the boss). Eventually, I found him sitting on the bench (or maybe on the ground) next to a student. As we walked out, all he said was, “I am sorry, she just needed to talk.” It was one of those moments that all of us who have had the honor to spend any time with him have experienced—that moment when you saw Joe Biden, the truly wonderful human.

There is a reason Biden is never on time. That’s it.

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That’s one of the reasons I kept my mouth shut for four years, because I have long admired the man and because, frankly, the White House didn’t need more incoming. I have a lot of respect for people who put in those 14–16-hour days, and they sure as hell didn’t need to respond to criticism from some guy like me, especially one who was supposed to be on their team.

But one thing I genuinely and truly do not understand about the Biden White House strategy is why they didn’t lean into the unscripted moments—the ones that once drove those advantages on all the personal traits. Every time he would give a static speech in the White House on whatever the policy issue of the day was, I wondered why he wasn’t instead speaking at a job site, or a health care clinic, or a school, or doing something more unscripted.

When I think back to the campaign in 2019, it was the unscripted moments that provided the boost when things were tough. It was the interaction with Brayden on the rope line in New Hampshire, when Biden showed vulnerability with his own stutter to help a young kid. It was the conversation and selfie with Jacquelyn at the New York Times, and the contrast of that very human moment to the elitist and self-important Times editorial board questioning why he was even running. It was the interchange with the pastor in South Carolina who had lost his wife in the massacre at Mother Emanuel. It was him showing empathy for Rush Limbaugh as he struggled with cancer (“I don’t like him at all, but he’s going through Hell”). It was him talking to the young kid at a protest in Wilmington in the days after George Floyd’s death.

Even when Biden was president, those moments stood out, like when he traded hats with the Trump voter in Pennsylvania. That was the Biden I loved, the guy who found a way to connect, even with those with whom he didn’t agree. Each of these moments let America see a bit into his soul, to see the decency that anyone who has been around him knows is at his core.

None of those moments happened on a show like The View, or behind a podium in some prepared, teleprompter speech. They happened because Joe Biden was given the space to be, well, Joe Biden.

SO WHAT NOW FOR MY OLD BOSS? I don’t think he should just go away—and, more importantly, I know he isn’t wired that way. As a former president, his presence is significant. It means something to the people when he is around. He can be a voice for the issues he cares about. President Carter had that with Habitat for Humanity. President Clinton had that with developing world health initiatives. President Bush had that with veterans. For President Biden, as it has been for most of his career, that basic cause might just be affecting the lives of everyday people.

But it has to be done right.

Boss, if you are reading this, I understand why you would push back on the many voices telling you to do less. You are right that many, if not most, of those voices have been some of the loudest skeptics since you decided to run in 2019. Many of them were very wrong about your chances. I too find myself rolling my eyes when certain people chime in these days.

But that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

I’ll also say this: I’ve never regretted sending that text to JMart ten years ago. So I hope you take this from the good place from which it comes—someone who believed in you when most did not and who believes there are ways you can still contribute.

Go visit coffee shops and diners, and have conversations with everyday people. Pop into an ice cream store with the grandkids, and be around people. Sit on a park bench with some neighbors. Drop off pizza at the fire station or police station. Hop on the train and work the cars, as you did for forty years. Let the moments happen.

You can do it and engage in the issues of the day if you choose. Go to worksites that the Infrastructure Act funded and say thank you. Serve food in a homeless shelter. Visit with veterans in a job-training program. Stop by a baseball game at a school with a high percentage of free and reduced lunch. And if you travel internationally, visit a health-care clinic that was severely cut when the Trump administration gutted foreign aid.

Use your stature to elevate the voices and stories of others. Reminding people of your decency is not only the best contrast you can make these days, it will do wonders for your legacy—literally (to steal a phrase). But please sir, leave the punditry to others.

And most importantly, always, always, always keep the faith.

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