President Joe Biden is an American hero in his own way.

To be sure, he is no George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln. But as late Republican Sen. Roman Hruska observed about the U.S. Supreme Court justices, “We can’t have all Brandeises and Frankfurters and Cardozos.”

Biden withdrew his reelection bid on July 20 not because he loved the White House less but because he loved America more. Biden’s self-sacrifice was unique in the annals of the presidency. President Woodrow Wilson did not leave the White House for 18 months after an incapacitating stroke in Oct. 1919. President Franklin Roosevelt insisted on running for reelection in 1944 despite being physically and mentally on life support.

The president’s career began long before his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021. He served as a U.S. senator representing Delaware from 1973 to 2009. There, he ascended to chair the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate Judiciary committees. He loyally served as President Barack Obama’s vice president from 2009 to 2017. Biden defeated then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Biden has earned honor and respect for tenaciously defending his family through thick and thin. Notwithstanding the political risks, he has offered unwavering support for his wayward son Hunter Biden. His family, right or wrong, is Biden’s admirable gospel.

Biden has overcome profound personal tragedies. Shortly after his election as the junior senator from Delaware, his first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident while shopping for a Christmas tree on Dec. 18, 1972, when a tractor-trailer crashed into their vehicle.

The Bidens’ sons, Beau and Hunter, were also in the car and survived with serious injuries. At the time, Beau was 3 years old and suffered multiple broken bones, while Hunter, 2, had a fractured skull. Sen. Biden resisted the temptation to resign.

Tragedy struck a second time in 2015 when Beau succumbed to glioblastoma at age 46. He had served as Delaware’s attorney general from 2007 to 2015, served in the armed forces, including nearly a year in Iraq, won a Bronze Star Medal, and was vying for the Democratic nomination as governor of Delaware for 2016 when death prematurely arrived.

President Biden brought Sweden and Finland into NATO. He imposed harsh economic sanctions for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022, which has crippled Russia’s oligarchs and provoked a brain drain of Russia’s best and brightest. The president has strengthened the encirclement, boycotting and isolation of China, including stiff tariffs, export and investment controls, and arms sales to Taiwan. He has not sought to undo Trump’s voiding of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran or the Intermediate-Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia. The defense budget has soared under Biden to nearly $900 billion.

The president appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. She sports a liberal interpretive philosophy and is the first Black woman and first former federal public defender to serve on the highest court. He appointed Native American Deb Haaland as interior secretary and Cuban American Alejandro Mayorkas as Homeland Security secretary.

Harris is saddled with defending Biden’s many fumbles: inflation, immigration and radical social or cultural policies. It’s the same way Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey was hamstrung by the requirement to defend President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam quagmire in the 1968 presidential campaign.

It’s time to move on from Biden. Let history decide his legacy.