A famous phrase conjured by T.S. Eliot in his poem The Hollow Men springs to mind as the most apposite reaction to the news that President Joe Biden has withdrawn from the 2024 US presidential race, though at the same time I am reluctant to use it.
That the re-election bid by only the second Catholic president to have served the United States is ending “not with a bang but a whimper” is all too true. But it also recalls the dreadful fact that the presidency of America’s first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, did end with the bang from a sniper’s rifle, as Donald Trump's run for re-election nearly did too.
