He was almost out the door.
President Biden, who reluctantly surrendered his bid for a second term over the summer, had just finished his first-ever appearance in the White House briefing room on Friday when a reporter yelled out a question many people have been wondering about for months.
“Do you want to reconsider dropping out of the race?” the reporter asked, his voice rising above questions about Ukraine and other weighty topics.
The president paused, then turned around and declared “I’m back in!” before cracking a smile and offering a wave of his hand, as if to say, “I wish.”
It has been 75 days since Mr. Biden decided to call it quits on a nearly 50-year career in public service that has taken him to the pinnacle of political power. He could have battled for four more years but, his closest advisers told him, the fight would have caused chaos and division in the Democratic Party. It was not to be.
And while the spotlight is trained on Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Biden is holding tightly to the office he still occupies for another 109 days. At the very moment that Mr. Biden popped into the briefing room on Friday, Ms. Harris was giving her own campaign speech — doing exactly what he would have been doing if things had gone differently.
Mr. Biden, at almost 82 years old, has wanted to be president for most of his adult life. He ran and lost, and then ran and lost again before finally winning in 2020. Had deep concerns about his age not made his re-election campaign unsustainable, he would no doubt be trying again.
Instead, he’s making the most of the time he has left in office, not only by choice but also because the world is keeping him busy.
Friday’s surprise news conference came about because of some good news: The economy added more jobs than anyone expected last month, giving the president something to crow about. And some heavy negotiating by Mr. Biden’s staff helped quickly resolve a strike by port workers that experts had thought would go on for weeks if not months.
“Look at the results across the board,” Mr. Biden told reporters. “Unemployment is down to 4.1 percent, and every month Vice President Harris and I have been in office, we’ve created jobs. Every single month. The nation has now created 16 million jobs.”
But he also acknowledged on Friday that he worries about the possibility that violence could erupt if former President Donald J. Trump loses in November.
“I don’t know whether it will be peaceful,” he said about the post-election period.
Despite the turmoil at home and abroad — war in Ukraine and the Middle East, and threats from China and elsewhere — there was a lightness about Mr. Biden in the briefing room on Friday. He did not seem like a leader weighed down by the gravity of all that he faces.
Perhaps it was the knowledge that, one way or another, the problems will soon be someone else’s to bear. Or maybe it was the realization that the economy that he presided over for almost four years is recovering nicely — just in time for historians who will soon be assessing his legacy.
Or it could have been that Mr. Biden was just in a playful mood, much like his younger days, when he was known to goof around with reporters, colleagues and even adversaries. There has been less of that of late. He is older, and in a different role now.
But as he walked out of the briefing room on Friday, it seemed he could not resist having some fun, even for a moment.
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