Only time will tell what President Biden’s legacy will look like, but with only a little over five months left in his presidency, we can guess at what he will be remembered for. His accomplishments include returning decency to the White House, defending democracy in Ukraine, crafting a bipartisan infrastructure law despite a deeply divided Congress, and taking climate change head on. That list would be impressive for a two-term president, but the fact that it was done coming out of a global pandemic in just one term makes it even more so. Even with that list, perhaps President Biden will be best remembered for what he won’t do rather than what he has done, and that’s run for a second term. President Biden’s withdrawal from the race gives Democrats an opportunity to hold the White House and prevent Donald Trump from undoing all of Biden’s accomplishments.

The polling was clear, Biden was trailing both nationally and in important swing states that will decide this year’s election. The window to win the White House was closing quickly on the Democrats and so what we saw over the course of a few weeks was an unprecedented push to have an incumbent president withdraw from the race. Not because his resume lacked experience or accomplishments, but because there were real questions about his ability to govern at 81. Those questions, which had been swirling for some time now, came rushing to the surface after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance in late June. Biden would have been 86 at the end of a second term.

Whether or not Biden was capable of governing almost ceased to matter, the perception became that he couldn’t. Regardless of the facts, and there were moments where Biden seemed to still have it, voters didn’t believe he was fit to be president anymore. When he leaves office next year, it will mark the end of a storied career of an American statesman that spans six decades. Biden has endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, and most Democratic officials and delegates have followed suit. The quickness and orderliness of the transition will stand out as uncharacteristic to anyone who is familiar with the Democratic Party and the typical infighting and chaos that has often come to define the party.

Early indications are that the move has helped the Democrats in the polls. There seems to be an early bump in the numbers, some are calling it the “Harris honeymoon.” Can it last? Who knows, and three months is a lifetime during an election year, so a lot can happen between now and the election. But to use a baseball analogy, if the pitcher doesn’t have it anymore, you can’t wait, you have to go make a pitching change. Bringing in a new pitcher doesn’t always mean you’re going to win, but it does mean you have a better chance of winning. That’s what the Democrats have done here, a political pitching change. They weren’t going to win with the guy they had on the mound, so now they’re bringing in the reliever. We’ll find out if she has the stuff to bring the game home in November.

President Biden has received a lot of praise for what had to have been an agonizing and heart wrenching decision and rightfully so. He did not have to withdraw; he had won the delegates necessary to become the Democratic nominee. But in an era of American politics where far too many candidates and officials put themselves ahead of the country, President Biden demonstrated what America first actually means. In a career full of accomplishments, perhaps his greatest will be this final act of selflessness.

There’s an old saying that all political careers end in failure. But that won’t apply to the end of President Biden’s career. With his withdrawal from the race, he follows in the footsteps of great American presidents like George Washington who put his country ahead of personal ambition. Like Cincinnatus of the Roman Republic, he freely relinquishes power and returns to life as a private citizen. It stands in stark contrast to how the last resident of the White House left, inciting chaos and mob violence in a desperate attempt to hold on to power in defiance of the will of the voters. We can only hope that our republic continues down the path set forth by President Biden, in terms of both his accomplishments and the return to the precedent of a peaceful transition of power.