Thinking Citizen Blog — How To Remember Joe Biden? What Is The Right Question? Who Cares? Who Should?
Thinking Citizen Blog — Sunday is Political Process Reform, Campaign Strategy, and Candidate Selection Day
Today’s Topic: How to Remember Joe Biden? What is the right question? Who cares? Who Should?
Yesterday, Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times published an op-ed piece entitled “How Did So Many Elected Democrats Miss Biden’s Infirmity?” is that the most important question to ask if you allocate any thought whatsoever to Joe Biden? The subtitle of the article was “A Reckoning is Due for the Disastrous Missteps that Paved the Way for Trump’s Return.” What, to your mind, were the top three worst missteps of the Biden administration?
Or did Maureen Down another New York Times columnist do a better job with today’s piece entitled “The Tragedy of Joe Biden.” The call out box read: “Even Shakespeare might not have dreamed up this family.”
If you were to summarize the “Tragedy of Joe Biden” in seven sentences in order of importance what would they be? How about three? How about one?
Remember FDR? Remember what made George Washington the greatest leader in history?
That is the two decisions that give him the greatest claim to that status? That is, resigning his commission and deciding not to run for a third term?
Below, a few excerpts from the Dowd and Goldberg articles.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
WAS THIS A “FRAUD AGAINST THE ELECTORATE”? A “COVER-UP”? IF SO, WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? (Michelle Goldberg)
1. “But more than lying to the public about Biden’s infirmity, I think too many Democrats were lying to themselves.”
2. “The ‘original’ sin that party leaders now need to grapple with is their tendency toward groupthink, inertia and an extreme and wildly counterproductive risk aversion.”
3. “It’s better for Democrats to rip off the Band-Aid now than to let the issue fester until the next election and to try to glean some bitter lessons from their collective failure.”
NB: “Politically, the easiest move is to dump all the blame onto Biden, his family and the clique of long time aides Tapper and Thompson call the “Politburo” — Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, ana Bruce Steel.” Tapper and Thompson are the authors of the recently published, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” Have you read it?
IS THE SENATE “THE MOST PRIVILEGED NURSING HOME IN THE COUNTRY?” (Nikki Haley) Below: Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, 91. Remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died in office at age 87? The oldest Supreme Court justice now is Clarence Thomas, 76. Donald Trump is 78.
1. “Gerontocracy is increasingly the norm in American politics.” (Goldberg)
2. “More than a dozen senators are 75 or older.”
3. “Iowa’s Chuck Grassley is in his 90s.”
NB: “Covering up for the aging is commonplace in modern Washington.”
“THE DENOUEMENT OF JOE BIDEN IS UNBEARABLY SAD” (Maureen Dowd) Below — George Washington, the guy who knew when to quit — he left office at age 65 !!!!
1. “The Irishman who could spend 45 minutes answering one question lost his gift of the gab. The father who saw two of his children die and two spin into addiction wilted under the ongoing stress, especially when Hunter Biden — “my only living son,” as Joe called him — got tangled in the legal system.”
2. “The gregarious pol, who loved chatting up lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, ended up barricaded in his Rehoboth, Del., house with Covid, furious at everyone, proclaiming his oldest friends naysayers. He was fuming at everyone except Jill, Hunter, and the cordon sanitaire of aides who had fueled his delusions that he could be re-elected despite his feeble and often incoherent state at 81.”
3. “And, saddest of all, the man known for his decency, empathy, humility, and patriotic spirt was poisoned by power, losing the ability to see that, in clinging to his office, he was hurtinig his party and country hed had served for over half a century. And hurting himself, ensuring a shellacking in the history books.”
NB: “It is the oldest story in tragedy: hubris. If presidents get reduced to their essence, Joe Biden’s is a chip on his shoulder.”
FOOTNOTE ON HUBRIS
1. Is your favorite example Lucifer? Icarus? Achilles? Oedipus?
2. Or how about Macbeth? Ahab? Victor Frankenstein?
3. Woodrow Wilson? FDR? LBJ? Trump?
Opinion | How the Democratic Party Closed Its Eyes to Biden’s Decline
Opinion | The Tragedy of Joe Biden
A Damning Portrait of an Enfeebled Biden Protected by His Inner Circle
The big chip on Joe Biden’s shoulder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to political process or campaign strategy or 2020 candidate selection or anything else for that matter.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day or change their thinking. Or to consolidate in your own memory something worth remembering that might otherwise be lost. Or to clarify or deepen your own understanding of something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
