By Terence Smith
Dear Mr. President;
You made the right decision.
It wasn’t easy to give up your campaign for another term, and you fought it as long as you could.
I understand better than most. I am four years older than you, and know first-hand what lies ahead for you.
It is not terrible (in fact, there are unique pleasures,) but most men in their 80’s lose a step or two, forget a thing or two and drop the ball now and then. Not a biggie for most of us, but then most of us octogenarians are not President of the United States.
You are. And, while I read that you work out five times a week and don’t drink, I can hardly imagine the pressures of your job. They must be relentless (along with the rewards,) and must increase dramatically during a campaign for re-election.
You made the right decision.
Now, of course, you are a lame duck. That may haunt you for the next six months, but it also offers some rare opportunities. Now you can double down on your most important priorities, foreign and domestic, without fretting on what impact it might have on your re-election chances. You can unload, for example, on Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu on the long-overdue need to end the fighting in Gaza, free the hostages still held by Hamas and create a post-war regime that protects the lives of the beleaguered Palestinians that have survived the horrors of the last 10 months.
You can redouble the international support for Ukraine, you can continue to enlarge the Indo-Pacific alliances around China, you can do everything possible to balance the inequities in the U.S. economy, you can speak to the racial prejudice that still afflicts this country, you can try, at least, to ease the deep and growing divisions between right and left, white and black, young and old.
The opportunities are endless and time is short.
Enjoy.
TERENCE SMITH, journalist and author of “Four Wars, Five Presidents, A Reporter’s Journey from Jerusalem to Saigon to the White House.”