Days before he left the White House in 2017, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma sur­prised Joe Biden with the Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom, declar­ing his sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an, white-haired lieu­tenant “the best vice pres­i­dent America’s ever had,” a “lion of Amer­i­can history.”

The trib­ute marked the pre­sumed end of a long pub­lic life that put Biden in the orbit of the Oval Office for 45 years — yet, through a com­bi­na­tion of fam­i­ly and per­son­al tragedy, his own polit­i­cal mis­steps and sheer bad tim­ing, had nev­er allowed him to sit behind the Res­olute Desk himself.

It turns out the pin­na­cle would not elude Biden after all. His moment just hadn’t yet arrived.

Joseph Robi­nette Biden Jr., 77, was elect­ed Sat­ur­day as the 46th pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, defeat­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in an elec­tion that played out against the back­drop of a pan­dem­ic, its eco­nom­ic fall­out and a nation­al reck­on­ing on racism. He becomes the old­est pres­i­dent-elect and brings with him a his­to­ry-mak­ing vice pres­i­dent-elect in Kamala Har­ris, the first Black woman and per­son of South Asian descent to serve in the nation’s sec­ond-high­est office.

There are no sure paths to a post held by only 44 men in more than two cen­turies, but Biden’s is among the most unlike­ly — even for a man who had aspired to the job for more than three decades, twice run­ning unsuc­cess­ful­ly and pass­ing on a third bid to try to suc­ceed Oba­ma four years ago.

The president-elect’s allies, though, say it is that delayed, cir­cuitous route that pre­pared him for 2020, when he could final­ly offer him­self not just as anoth­er sen­a­tor or gov­er­nor with 10-point plans and out­size ambi­tion. Instead, from launch on April 25, 2019, Biden sold him­self as the expe­ri­enced, empa­thet­ic elder states­man par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­ed to defeat a “dan­ger­ous” and “divi­sive” pres­i­dent and then “restore the soul of the nation” in Trump’s wake.

“A lot of peo­ple dis­missed it,” said Karen Finney, a top aide to nom­i­nee Hillary Clin­ton in 2016. “But when I saw his open­ing speech, talk­ing about the fight for the soul of the coun­try, I said, ‘He gets it.’ That’s what a pres­i­dent does. A pres­i­dent looks around the coun­try and under­stands what’s happening.”

“Biden met the moment,” she said.

His vic­to­ry, though, did not come with the usu­al trap­pings. He did not bring along a clear Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate major­i­ty, and sev­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic House can­di­dates lost, rais­ing the prospect of a close­ly divid­ed gov­ern­ment like­ly to test his promise of bipar­ti­san­ship. State leg­is­la­tures also did not flip even as Biden was win­ning the pop­u­lar vote by about 5 per­cent­age points.

In his first pub­lic state­ment as pres­i­dent-elect Sat­ur­day, Biden acknowl­edged the ten­sions that sure­ly will linger, but called on Amer­i­cans “to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come togeth­er as a nation … to unite, and to heal.”

Biden first joined a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry race shaped by near­ly two dozen rivals — most con­sid­er­ably younger — already deep into an ide­o­log­i­cal fight over issues from uni­ver­sal health care to tax­a­tion of bil­lion­aires. Biden took an open lane, set­tling where he spent his 36 years as a Delaware sen­a­tor: a main­stream lib­er­al with an estab­lish­ment, deal-mak­ing core. But his vis­cer­al, emo­tion­al appeal tran­scend­ed par­ty identity.

When he warned that reelect­ing Trump “would for­ev­er alter the char­ac­ter” of Amer­i­ca, Biden was draw­ing on life and polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence to tell his fel­low Democ­rats they were hav­ing a pre­ma­ture debate. In his esti­mate, they were argu­ing over where the metaphor­i­cal train should go when, in fact, the train was — and remains — off the rails.

Biden was the pre­sumed front-run­ner he hadn’t been in 1987, when his first White House bid end­ed embar­rass­ing­ly with a pla­gia­rized speech; or in 2008, when he was trounced in the Iowa cau­cus­es by Oba­ma and oth­ers; or even in 2016, when the com­bi­na­tion of his son Beau’s death in 2015 and Obama’s behind-the-scenes sup­port for Clin­ton forced him to pass on the race.

Yet Biden was a wob­bly 2020 favorite. He was well-regard­ed, even beloved as his party’s “Uncle Joe,” a loy­al deputy to Oba­ma, but he faced a riv­er of crit­i­cism as too old, too mod­er­ate, too white, too wist­ful, too senatorial.

He was not the same fig­ure who’d first gone to Iowa in the 1988 cycle as a young star in his par­ty, a gift­ed ora­tor whose boom­ing speech­es could fill a room while at the same time mak­ing a con­nec­tion with the lega­cies of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic coali­tion Franklin Roo­sevelt built.

Though he even­tu­al­ly built out a pol­i­cy agen­da for an ambi­tious pres­i­den­cy, there was no sig­na­ture pro­pos­al for a grand pro­gram like “Medicare for All.” Biden empha­sized more per­son­al traits.

His empa­thy — traced to a debil­i­tat­ing child­hood stut­ter, a 1972 car crash that killed his first wife and infant daugh­ter weeks after his elec­tion to the Sen­ate, and then Beau’s death as an adult — wasn’t some­thing he could eas­i­ly mar­shal on a crowd­ed debate stage.

Recall­ing decades on Capi­tol Hill meant rem­i­nisc­ing about the days of a Sen­ate that still includ­ed old South­ern seg­re­ga­tion­ists, and it invit­ed scruti­ny of his votes for crim­i­nal jus­tice laws, trade and tax deals, and war res­o­lu­tions that are anath­e­ma to younger Democrats.

Talk­ing so much about his fam­i­ly played into Trump’s efforts to sul­ly Joe Biden and son Hunter as cor­rupt. Even Biden’s umbrage about Trump’s racist rhetoric high­light­ed that he was also a white estab­lish­ment fig­ure, vying to lead a par­ty whose ener­gy comes from women, Black and Lati­no vot­ers and young people.

When the nom­i­nat­ing process start­ed, Biden lost bad­ly in both Iowa and New Hamp­shire, invit­ing talk about how he might make a grace­ful exit from the race.

He found emphat­ic redemp­tion, pow­ered by Black vot­ers so vital to any Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date, by win­ning the South Car­oli­na pri­ma­ry and reset­ting the race in his favor. That vic­to­ry sent a mes­sage to Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in key states that Biden could build a win­ning coalition.

“I endorsed Joe Biden as soon as he announced because I thought he was the only can­di­date who would ever win” bat­tle­ground states, said Gwen Gra­ham, a for­mer Flori­da con­gress­woman and 2018 can­di­date for gov­er­nor. Gra­ham, whose father served with Biden in the Sen­ate, cit­ed the president-elect’s “cen­trism and expe­ri­ence” as pri­ma­ry rea­sons, but added anoth­er trait she said was crit­i­cal in the era of Trump.

“Joe Biden is just a fun­da­men­tal­ly decent man,” she said.

House Major­i­ty Whip Jim Clyburn, the high­est-rank­ing Black mem­ber of Con­gress and South Carolina’s most influ­en­tial Demo­c­rat, leaned on the same assess­ment when he made his sem­i­nal endorse­ment in Feb­ru­ary, days ahead of what would become Biden’s first pri­ma­ry vic­to­ry in 32 years of pres­i­den­tial campaigns.

“We know Joe,” Clyburn said with emo­tion. “But most impor­tant­ly, Joe knows us.”

It’s an open ques­tion whether the bond Biden formed first with Black vot­ers and then with mod­er­ate white Democ­rats would have expand­ed into a gen­er­al elec­tion vic­to­ry if the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic — and Trump’s repeat­ed dis­missal of its eco­nom­ic and health threats — hadn’t come to dom­i­nate 2020. And it’s cer­tain the pres­i­dent-elect now faces a dif­fer­ent chal­lenge as he seeks to turn his Novem­ber coali­tion into a gov­ern­ing alliance.

But it’s not debat­able that Biden’s core pitch, root­ed in his polit­i­cal and per­son­al biog­ra­phy, was the same when he launched his cam­paign in the spring of 2019 as it was when he won the South Car­oli­na pri­ma­ry in Feb­ru­ary 2020 and as he closed out his cam­paign against Trump.

Oba­ma, award­ing that rare civil­ian hon­or to a man he said in 2017 was head­ed to life as a pri­vate cit­i­zen, had one thing right: “He’s nowhere close to finished.”