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A Good Man for a Wounded Country
https://thebulwark.com/a-good-man-for-a-wounded-country/-snip-
At the age of 77, he emerged from retirement to surmount a history of failed presidential races. He placed fourth in the Iowa caucuses, fifth in the New Hampshire primary, and second in the Nevada caucuses, before finally winning his first primary ever, in South Carolina, on Leap Day. He then outpaced his competitors; assembled a diverse coalition; united a fractious party; chose the first woman of color to run as a vice presidential nominee; conquered doubts about his age and acumen; and defeated a sociopathic president whose unremitting viciousness would have challenged the most poised and confident of leaders.
-snip-
His moderation, maturity, inclusiveness, and inherent decency made the undecided and unsettled feel safe in choosing him over a man whose feral inner landscape had turned America against itself. However embittered Trump’s partisans may be, for millions of Americans Biden’s accession feels like a fever breaking. This veteran of a 50-year public career defined less by innovation than compromise became, remarkably, a man for our times.
Amid vote-counting roiled by confusion, misinformation and the unprecedented complications wrought by deadly pandemic, Biden provided a salutary contrast with Trump’s corrosive claims of fraud. “Democracy’s sometimes messy,” he told us. “It sometimes requires a little patience as well. But that patience has been rewarded now for more than 240 years with a system of government that’s been the envy of the world.”
Here Biden’s very normality became a kind of statesmanship: He provided not only a measure of calm to counter the mass angst and anxiety, but reassurance that the core of our democracy—the counting of votes followed by a peaceful transition of power—would prevail. As our soon-to-be ex-president threatened, whined and blustered, striving to drag the country into the fever swamp of his own anarchic petulance, our electoral machinery ground on—the bones and sinews of a capable, honorable America engaged in a common enterprise which survived Trump’s contempt for the system which had elevated him so far beyond his worth. Biden, by his very temperance—from his calls for patience to his gracious and unifying acceptance speech—reaffirmed the nobility of ideals greater than the wants and needs of those who would lead us.
As Biden’s victory settles into our collective consciousness, it will bring to many a sense of relief and resolution whose very depth will reveal how completely Trump’s character disorder had permeated our lives. The essence of Trump’s pathology was that governance became a form of emotional terrorism. At last we will be able to look away from our president without fearing what he might do next.
-snip-
At the age of 77, he emerged from retirement to surmount a history of failed presidential races. He placed fourth in the Iowa caucuses, fifth in the New Hampshire primary, and second in the Nevada caucuses, before finally winning his first primary ever, in South Carolina, on Leap Day. He then outpaced his competitors; assembled a diverse coalition; united a fractious party; chose the first woman of color to run as a vice presidential nominee; conquered doubts about his age and acumen; and defeated a sociopathic president whose unremitting viciousness would have challenged the most poised and confident of leaders.
-snip-
His moderation, maturity, inclusiveness, and inherent decency made the undecided and unsettled feel safe in choosing him over a man whose feral inner landscape had turned America against itself. However embittered Trump’s partisans may be, for millions of Americans Biden’s accession feels like a fever breaking. This veteran of a 50-year public career defined less by innovation than compromise became, remarkably, a man for our times.
Amid vote-counting roiled by confusion, misinformation and the unprecedented complications wrought by deadly pandemic, Biden provided a salutary contrast with Trump’s corrosive claims of fraud. “Democracy’s sometimes messy,” he told us. “It sometimes requires a little patience as well. But that patience has been rewarded now for more than 240 years with a system of government that’s been the envy of the world.”
Here Biden’s very normality became a kind of statesmanship: He provided not only a measure of calm to counter the mass angst and anxiety, but reassurance that the core of our democracy—the counting of votes followed by a peaceful transition of power—would prevail. As our soon-to-be ex-president threatened, whined and blustered, striving to drag the country into the fever swamp of his own anarchic petulance, our electoral machinery ground on—the bones and sinews of a capable, honorable America engaged in a common enterprise which survived Trump’s contempt for the system which had elevated him so far beyond his worth. Biden, by his very temperance—from his calls for patience to his gracious and unifying acceptance speech—reaffirmed the nobility of ideals greater than the wants and needs of those who would lead us.
As Biden’s victory settles into our collective consciousness, it will bring to many a sense of relief and resolution whose very depth will reveal how completely Trump’s character disorder had permeated our lives. The essence of Trump’s pathology was that governance became a form of emotional terrorism. At last we will be able to look away from our president without fearing what he might do next.
-snip-
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