It’s just over six months until Election Day. The president faces a tough fight for reelection. His approval rating has cratered below 40% in the polls, his party is divided over a foreign war, and a bipartisan chorus declares that he’s no longer up to the job. Polls show him running neck and neck with the likely Republican nominee.

Faced with this grim situation, the president decides to put country before his own political ambition and declares he won’t run for reelection.

Joe Biden in 2024?

Nope, it’s Lyndon Johnson in 1968. On March 31 of that year, LBJ shocked the nation when, at the end of a televised address on the Vietnam War, he declared, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

Today, a chorus of political commentators predict or hope that Biden will follow LBJ’s example. But 2024 is not 1968, and Joseph Robinette Biden is not Lyndon Baines Johnson.

In 1968, the Democratic Party was deeply divided over the Vietnam War. Despite having deployed over 500,000 troops and suffered over 20,000 deaths,........

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