Will President Joe Biden run again in 2024? It won’t be easy

President Joe Biden plans to seek a second term in the White House in 2024 — or so he says publicly.

But at age 79, with his poll numbers looking dismal, his early signals are more a sign of weakness than confidence. No modern president has had to assure his supporters so early in his first term that he’s serious about running again.

One reason for doubt is, he has to say it.

If Biden had said during his 2020 campaign that he’d just serve one term, he would have magnified concern about his personal vitality and may have been so weakened that President Donald Trump would have beaten him. And if he were to say now that he’d serve only four years, it would make him an instant lame duck.

His ambitious, though badly battered, legislative programs would be easy to ignore even by Democrats in Congress.

Theodore Roosevelt always maintained that the biggest mistake of his political life was saying, after his 1904 election, that he wouldn’t go for another term in 1908. In those days, presidents felt honor-bound to keep their commitments so, even though Roosevelt probably could have won if he’d come up with some alibi for changing his mind, he kept his word.

The second Roosevelt kept even his vice president guessing in 1940, before deciding to run for a third — then fourth — term in the White House. It kept potential successors at bay.

But the circumstances FDR faced don’t compare to anything today.

Biden doesn’t seem like an especially ego-driven man. But anyone with ambition enough to win so many elections to the U.S. Senate, vice presidency and White House is not inclined to bow out when another term is possible.

But is it possible?

No president has found it necessary to reassure friend and foe alike, in the first year of his first term, that they might have to put up with him for eight years. Usually, a re-election bid is a safe assumption.

But usually they’re not 79 and don’t have their predecessor talking about a rematch.

Since FDR beat Herbert Hoover, only three presidents have been forcibly retired. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush looked strong and re-electable in their first years. After the first Gulf war, Bush was so strong that potential Democratic challengers were backing away from challenging him.

Poor Biden. Everything is going against him — the economy, Donald Trump, inflation, foreign affairs, the southwest border crisis, congressional in-fighting, his own public image.

A recent CBS News poll showed his approval rating at 44% and that was up from a Quinnipiac University poll that rated Biden’s favorable rating at 36%. The only area in which CBS found him above the halfway mark was in distribution of the COVID vaccine.

Generally speaking, when the best thing you’ve got going for you is a disease, that’s not good.

It’s early yet and, if his infrastructure spending bears fruit in jobs and structural improvements, the image of the Democratic Party could improve. If inflation cools, that will help.

Democratic chances of maintaining a slim majority in Congress are not good, even so.

The previous two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, were in moderate trouble — nothing like Biden’s current woes — but survived re-election handily. Trump was what lawyers call sui generis, not comparable to anything America has ever seen.

The president got an encouraging report from his annual physical examination last week. But the lingering perception that he’s not quite up to the job will be actively promoted by his critics, and there’s not much Biden can do to counter it.

News reports out of Washington indicate Democrats are getting very nervous about Vice President Kamala Harris, whose poll numbers are even worse than the president’s. If she’s the nominee in 2024, chances of keeping the White House will dim considerably.

But she would be the instant front runner if Biden bows out, just as Vice President Hubert Humphrey inherited the party’s nomination when Lyndon Johnson pulled out in 1968. Again, political conditions on the ground were vastly different then but the final result would likely be the same — a Republican winning the White House.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Tallahassee Democrat capitol reporter.

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Bill Cotterell: Will Joe Biden run again in 2024? It won’t be easy