Yes, Biden earned a second term. He’s also right to step down.

Amid all the praise of Biden’s half-century of public service, it is easy to forget that this is his second farewell. He was persuaded not to run for the White House in the 2016 cycle, leaving the vice presidency at 74 and settling into the role of an elder statesman, a used-to-be. But then he became alarmed and disgusted at Trump’s betrayal of the nation’s most cherished ideals.

Biden’s decision to end his bid for reelection was a nod to political reality: He no longer had enough support within the Democratic Party to wage a winning campaign. His performance in the June 27 debate against Trump forced Democrats to air their previously unvoiced concerns about his age and fitness. Party leaders pushed him out, using a drip-drip-drip campaign of leaks and defections that Biden must have resented.

“I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term,” Biden said. “But nothing — nothing — can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So, I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.”

I agree on both counts. Yes, Biden has earned a second term. And, yes, the right thing to do was step aside and leave the task of defeating Trump to the Democratic Party’s new presumptive nominee, Vice President Harris.

President Barack Obama often used a track-and-field metaphor to talk about the presidency. This is how he put it at the unveiling of his official portrait: “I’ve always described the presidency as a relay race. You take the baton from someone. You run your leg as hard and as well as you can, and then you hand it off to someone else, knowing that your work will be incomplete. The portraits hanging in the White House chronicle the runners in that race, each of us tasked with trying to bring the country we love closer to its highest aspirations.”

Biden has run one hell of a leg, and he mentioned some of the highlights in his speech. At his inauguration — just two weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection — he said the nation was shivering through a “winter of peril and possibilities.” He proceeded to steer the nation through the worst of the covid-19 pandemic and then send the economy roaring out of what he called its worst crisis since the Great Depression. He persuaded Congress to make historic investments in fighting poverty, modernizing the nation’s infrastructure and confronting the existential threat posed by climate change. He made historic, groundbreaking appointments — chief among them Harris as his running mate and Ketanji Brown Jackson as Supreme Court justice.

On the world stage, Biden restored U.S. leadership of the NATO alliance and orchestrated the flood of allied money and weapons that allowed Ukraine to stop invading Russian troops in their tracks. And after decades of toothless talk about the need for a “pivot” toward the Indo-Pacific region, Biden actually executed the maneuver.

My guess is that if the GOP had nominated a “normal” Republican — the kind that once was commonplace but now is practically extinct — Biden might have decided earlier to stick with his pledge to be a transitional, one-term president. And if he had decided to run anyway against someone in the mold of Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) or former congresswoman Liz Cheney (Wyo.), Democratic leaders might not have shoved him out.

Which of the two parties was in power used to be a matter of nuance in policy positions and budget numbers. With Trump in the race, though, the election means so much more. “We have to decide,” Biden said. “Do we still believe in honesty, decency and respect; freedom, justice and democracy? In this moment, we can see those we disagree with not as enemies but as, I mean, fellow Americans? Can we do that? Does character in public life still matter?”

Biden said we must decide “between moving forward or backward, between hope and hate, between unity and division.” I believe he is right about the turning-point stakes.

I hope that when I’m 81, I’m still able to work out every morning and ride my bicycle on the weekends. But as Biden spoke, you could see how the office has aged him, just as it ages every president. You could hear the softness, and at times the wobble, in his voice.

He can take a well-earned breather. Let Harris fight to take the next lap with the baton.