Joe Biden's legacy is our fate
REMINDER: A Conversation with Chris Cillizza event TONIGHT from 8 - 9 pm ET
I am overwhelmed by a deep sadness for my country.
I am an American.
What we are collectively witnessing is a painful reckoning and the fruits of a long-held denialism about a good man, who served his country with honor, distinction, good cheer and respect. Joe Biden’s name should be carved in granite, and affixed to a thousand plaques that recall a moment after chaos when we built again. He is the champion — the president of the United States who holds in his hands the power to truly stand as George Washington’s equal in an act of humility, where the whole country can see someone put the nation first. What an achievement and a glorious legacy it would be. Joe Biden would be the man who defeated Trump, and then obliterated Trumpism with selflessness and love. Truly, he would be a giant.
The choice that he faces offers no middle ground or space. Joe Biden’s legacy is our fate.
Should he choose to lose this election, then he will be recalled ignominiously as a short preface to a vile restoration and national catastrophe. There will certainly be no remembrances towards doing your “goodest.”
There are 39 days until the Democratic convention, and the Trump high command views Joe Biden as a “gift.” They were planning for a landslide before the debate.
Later this afternoon, the nation’s media will seek to evaluate presidential fitness like a DMV test with a news conference as the road test. Surviving media tests and performing tricks for political survival will not defeat Trump.
Why is facing this so difficult?
Why does it produce such rage from the side that disdains Trump?
Reality always forces its reckonings. Anyone who doubts one is at hand hasn’t been paying attention.
Personally, it makes me want to cry.
Predicting what would happen does not make me happy. I wish I had been wrong, but the good news is that Trump can be crushed. All it will take is the proper alchemy of humility and reality to align within President Biden.
The future of the Democratic party hangs in the air at this hour. Joe Biden will decide.
There are only a few elites in the room. Let’s be honest about that.
President Biden got to the top. He is the president of the United States, and he won by defeating a villain. He is a historic figure and a great one-term president who will be remembered as such should he say no to more. This is the supreme test of character in this gluttonous, Trumpian moment of national crisis.
Should the founding fathers be watching, joined by Douglass, Lincoln, Grant, John Lewis, MLK, Rosa Parks, Ike, FDR, JFK, and a million fallen soldiers, they would no doubt be hoping for the choice of something bigger than self-interest.
The test has come for a good man and a proud man. A few months, back I wrote this about manhood, and did it in response to Josh Hawley’s literary travesty:
Right now, my 18 year-old-son is sailing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on a sailboat with 22 souls aboard. Before he left, he asked for some recommendations to listen to as he made the passage. One of the classes he is taking is about leadership, and I suggested he listen to the following under the stars one night in the middle of the journey. From my perspective at 53, I told him this is as close as I have heard anyone describe what I would call a perfectly lived life.
The words were played at MLK’s funeral, and are his words imagining his death.
We don’t talk enough about death, and thus the meaning of a well-loved life.
Listen to this. I hope it touches my son’s heart, and I hope it touches yours:
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