Ben’s view
On May 13, 2022, then-White House Middle East envoy Brett McGurk asked his boss how he liked his job. Joe Biden, he’d noticed, had been a chatty, expressive vice president, but had grown quieter in a way that wasn’t just about his age.
“There’s no joy in it,” Biden responded. “That’s the difference. No joy in this job.”
McGurk’s new memoir cataloguing two grim years of trying to negotiate between American and regional officials is, among other things, a set of portraits of miserable world leaders:
- There’s the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who “seemed annoyed to be there” when the Americans showed up to ask for help with oil prices.
- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, pressed by Biden to negotiate, “seemed lost, used to meetings that started nowhere and ended there.”
- Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi “looked down at his shoes shuffling on the carpet” as “something was weighing on him.”
- Biden took out his own irritation on the short-lived Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, telling him, “Don’t be a phony, man.” Lapid, in turn, “recoiled.”
And so on. In McGurk’s account, only the “smug” and inscrutable Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t obviously unhappy.
This narrative of the woes of leadership could serve as a cautionary tale for the few dozen men and women in both of America’s political parties currently searching their souls and consulting their spouses about whether to run for president. Journalists typically treat these deliberations as theater. But even the people most obviously preparing to run take them more seriously than you’d imagine. Win or lose, a candidate’s campaign will consume their life and their loved ones’; a victory guarantees their life will change forever.
So while Vice President JD Vance’s aides right now appear quite confident he’ll run, they also sincerely believe that he hasn’t yet — totally — decided. Vice presidents are special: They have already paid the price of national office, getting far less in return than their bosses. But one Republican elder who likes Vance is advising against it: He suggests Vance return to Ohio, get to work reinventing trade education or some other worthy task, and run for president as the guy, rather than Donald Trump’s shadow.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s supporters, meanwhile, swear he hasn’t taken any steps toward running, much less decided on it. They also caution people against saying he’s not running, however: He hasn’t decided anything.
On the Democratic side, we assume they’re all running — California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Sens. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., and the rest.
But they might want to read McGurk’s book and think about whether they really want the job. Because oddly, of all the distinguishing qualities of successful presidential candidates, ambition turns out to be perhaps the most salient.
One former Biden administration official recently quipped that their money was on Maryland Gov. Wes Moore for the Democratic nomination, because he has the single quality you most need to become president: really, really wanting to be president.
Room for Disagreement
The potential candidates will also hear more cynical arguments in favor of running no matter what. ABC News observed in 2024: “there are also a lot of benefits, even if you lose: better job opportunities, increased public profiles and the chance to build up a war chest for the next run.”