Joe Biden wanted to use the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War as the moment to return to the political spotlight.
It explains why the former president chose a British broadcaster for his first big interview since leaving office, as well as the timing, a smidge before Victory in Europe day, and it accounted for at least part of his message about the dangers of appeasing Vladimir Putin.
But it also reveals a crucial truth about Mr Biden, 82, and his life in politics, and acts as the opening shots in the battle over his legacy.
While many former presidents keep their heads down after leaving power out of deference for the office they once held, Mr Biden’s outspoken condemnation of Donald Trump comes less than four months after he returned to civilian life.
And it gives him a chance to marshal his arguments ahead of a blockbuster account of the final days of his presidency, which is due to be published in less than two weeks time.
“Original sin: president Biden’s decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again,” is written by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson.
It promises a slew of headlines about who knew what and when about Mr Biden’s frailty.
“What you will learn makes president Biden’s decision to run for re-election seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless — a desperate bet that went bust — and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents,” Penguin said in a press release.
Mr Biden dropped out of the 2024 race a month after his disastrous TV debate appearance – ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
For at least one day, Mr Biden led the news with his prebuttals.
He said he didn’t think “it would have mattered” if he had walked away from re-election earlier. Kamala Harris was a “good candidate” who was “fully funded”, he said.
Democrats who have had to pick up the pieces of a disastrous election, losing not just the White House but control of Congress, are furious.
They see a tragic irony in his quick return to the limelight.
“It’s an illustration of the issues that led to last year’s Democratic debacle where Biden didn’t know when enough was enough,” said Brett Bruen, who worked for the Obama White House.
“He didn’t recognise the need to pass the baton, and even after everything that’s transpired, he still seems to not understand the role that most of us would like him to play.”
In other words, to disappear and not give Mr Trump a target.
Credit: BBC Radio 4 Today
Barack Obama, by contrast, took almost 18 months to open fire on the “crazy stuff” coming out of the Trump White House in 2018.
Mr Biden is just getting started it seems. He is set to sit down with his wife Jill on Thursday for an interview on The View, ABC’s daytime show.
In the meantime, Americans have started to look back more fondly on Mr Biden’s time in office.
As Mr Trump’s tariffs trigger global uncertainty and turmoil in the markets, polls show that the economic blame game has flipped.
Where the Republican candidate last year beat the Democratic incumbent on questions about who was best placed to manage the economy, a Gallup Poll to mark Mr Trump’s first 100 days in office showed that almost half of adults blamed him for current financial woes, while only 27 per cent blamed Mr Biden.
Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist, said the former president should have waited at least six months to re-emerge and remind voters of just what they had rejected in November. “Joe Biden’s timing is bad,” he said. “It was bad last year, it is bad this year.”
His late departure from last year’s race and his early return to the fray this year are rooted in the same feature of Mr Biden’s life.
He won election to the Senate at the age of 30 before spending half a century in politics. He sniffed around pretty much every open Democratic presidential primary since 1988 and he finally got the top job at the age of 78.
His plan to be a “transitional president,” giving way to a younger candidate after one term, was quickly shelved.
The political life is the only one he knows. And it is no surprise that he has returned to the fray so quickly.
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