History will remember President Joe Biden as an “American hero” like Abraham Lincoln for his decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer Jon Meacham. In a New York Times op-ed, Meacham called Biden “my friend” and commended the president for the “self-sacrifice” of putting what was best for his party “ahead of one’s immediate desires.” By bowing out of the race, “Biden has put country above self, the Constitution above personal ambition, the future of democracy above temporal gain,” wrote Meacham, who has no party affiliation and has voted for Democrats and Republicans. Although Meacham wrote that he did not agree “with everything [Biden] has done or wanted to do in terms of policy,” Biden “stepped in the breach” when the country needed him most after Donald Trump’s presidency. “History and fate brought [Biden] to the pinnacle in a late season in his life, and in the end, he respected fate,” wrote Meacham. “And he respected the American people.”