Doing the Right Thing
I spent all day yesterday getting ready for and anticipating the presidential debate. I cancelled going to the airport here in Norfolk to pick up my youngest son and his wife in order to not miss a moment of that debate. From the first moment of the 90-minute debate, it was a jaw-dropping and heart-palpitating experience to watch as Joe Biden fulfilled all of our worst nightmares of looking every bit and more of his age and feebleness. Trump did what he had been coached to do, which was to keep his cool and say whatever he wanted to so long as he did not go off into a fiery rant or let Biden get his goat. He did tell over thirty (enumerated directly afterwards by the CNN fact-checker) blatant lies. In fact, he probably lied every time his microphone was turned on to some degree or another. In addition, he refused to keep pace with the questions being posed to him. Whether it was about child care or January 6th, he avoided answering the moderators questions and instead got into a greater and greater pattern of blustering and lying his way through the session.
But the fact remains that the most obvious fact that hit all viewers in the face was that Joe Biden looked and sounded feeble. This may have been made worse by what they call the Gish Gallop, which describes Trump’s bullying manner of rapid-fire ranting (they say it particularly debilitates anyone with a stutter like Joe Biden). But the reality that is now starkly on the table is that Joe Biden’s chances of easily winning this election have worsened by a significant amount. Within minutes of the ending of the debate, while the cable news pundits were reeling about how to spin what had just happened, the Financial Times published an article that said that it is not too late for Biden to drop out and still allow a viable Democratic candidate that is younger and stronger to step in and take the reigns of the all-important task of insuring that Donald Trump does not regain the presidency.
Whether Republicans will admit it or not, we all know that Biden is a decent man who cares deeply about the heart of America and about the common men and women of America. He is one of them and his efforts have been entirely focused on making life better for them over his 50-year career. By contrast, we all also know that Trump is a bad man who cares only about himself and decidedly not about the country. The stakes are very high for this election and the need for a solution that insures that the binary choice between the kind of country that Joe Biden has been building for us all versus the self-centered, random and dangerous path that Donald Trump seems to thrive on ends with the former prevailing.
On this morning’s news shows, as exemplified by Morning Joe (strangely enough, a name that gets right to the point of the matter), the contrast of views seems exemplified by Mika, who is supporting Biden despite the bad performance and Joe (Scarborough), who takes the pragmatist’s view that due to the importance of the outcome, we cannot afford to stand by Biden and we need to do what the FT journalist suggested, which was to find a better choice at this moment than offered by Biden.
The burden on Joe Biden at this moment is simple and needs to be selfless. He needs to decide whether he can overcome his bad performance last night and be strong enough to bring home the victory we all need to keep Trump as far away from national authority as possible. If he can, he needs to get to it right away. If not, he needs to step down quickly and do everything to give an alternative a chance to gain the needed momentum to overtake Trump’s lead. As almost everyone agrees, this is Biden’s choice and Biden’s alone to make. Because I know that Joe Biden is a good man who has achieved enough to insure his legacy as a great president, he only has his reputation as a great and decent man to protect. That is best achieved by doing the right thing now more than ever. And here’s the thing, there are arguments on both sides about what that right thing is. It is not at all clear that he should or shouldn’t step down. Where I come out on this is very simple. I trust Joe Biden. I trust him to make the right decision on this, the most important decision of his political life. If there was ever a president who needed to do the right thing, it is Joe Biden at this moment. I trust that he will do just that.