Joe Biden has been a good President, but missed being great because he wasn’t a great communicator.

You can’t be a great politician – and certainly not a great President – if you aren’t a great communicator.

Biden’s one term is much like President Jimmy Carter’s. Both did great things, but couldn’t tell the story.

(Trivia note: In 1976, the first sitting Senator to endorse Carter for President was a young first-termer, Joe Biden.)

Both Carter and Biden were succeeded by great story-tellers, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, even if their stories are filled with lies.

Look at President Biden’s record.

He led us out of the pandemic. He led an economic recovery. He passed a massive infrastructure bill. He invested in American manufacturing. He cut taxes for working people. He cut the cost of insulin to $35 a month. He fought climate change and fostered clean energy. He kept us out of war through the perils and pitfalls of Ukraine and the Middle East.

But Biden wasn’t out there every day, in every platform, telling and selling the story. He left it to the media to do that.

When inflation and immigration became crises in the public mind, he didn’t recognize, respect and respond to the fear, anger and anxiety.

His disastrous debate June 27 (photo) made clear why he hasn’t been aggressively out there in the public forum. He just wasn’t up to it.

In truth, Biden has never been a great communicator. That’s why his presidential bids failed in 1988 and 2008 and why he was faltering in 2020, until South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn spoke up for him.

In the 2020 general election, amid the pandemic and after four years of Trump’s noisy chaos, it paid for Biden to keep quiet.

But that didn’t work in the White House.

Then Biden stayed in the race too long. He should have declared victory and said he was stepping aside after Democrats’ surprisingly strong performance in the 2022 midterms. The party could have had a healthy, spirited contest that produced a tried and tested winner.

Instead, Biden left Kamala Harris with only 100 days to mount a national campaign.

He also left her in a box. She wanted to be loyal to the man who picked her for Vice President and endorsed her for President. Her loyalty kept her from separating herself from Biden when 65% of the voters thought the country was on the wrong track.

The same thing happened in 1968, when Vice President Hubert Humphrey was reluctant to break with President Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam.

That gave America Richard Nixon and, until Trump, the most corrupt, criminal presidency in our history.

President Biden has served his country honorably and well for over 50 years in public office and four years in the presidency. But, as in a Greek tragedy, his pride led him to make a fatal error.

And it left his country with four more years of Trump.