DAWSON CITY – This drama has moved to another act, and U.S. President Joe Biden has determined that it was neither in his party’s interests, nor the country’s best interests, for him to continue trying for a second term as president.
It seems to me to be reasonable to take a look at how this issue has been handled over the past month.
Don’t ask me to spend much time looking at how the two political parties have been handling it, because they’ve been doing pretty much what you would expect them to do, given their ideological stances.
Biden did beat Donald Trump during the last national election in the United States, despite Trump’s claims to the contrary and his continued attempts, which failed in 60-some court challenges, to make any headway at all.
But this time, Biden was facing a Republican Party that has completely drowned itself in Trump’s MAGA creed, and has spent the last three years marinating itself in the Big Lie about the stolen 2020 election.
Biden’s poor performance in the June 27 debate caused everyone – probably including himself, because he does tend to be an honest man, unlike his opponent – to have second thoughts over whether he would be able to do it again.
The way that the various branches of the news media, both American and Canadian, covered this event, had a lot to do with the decision the President finally released last Sunday.
I strongly suspect that catching another bout of COVID at his age was also something like the last straw in terms of his confidence level.
Even with the best of medical care, this disease Is likely to be harder on an octogenarian than it would’ve been if he had caught it before he turned 80, and the recovery time was likely to have made it very difficult for him to campaign with any energy.
Would it make it difficult for him to continue as President? Probably not.
Unlike Trump, Biden has actually surrounded himself with some very good people, and he has made intelligent use of them during his entire time in office.
With first-rate medical care, and without the additional strain of trying to run a campaign, as
well as fight off all the challenges from within his own party that emerged over the last three or four weeks, he’ll probably do just fine between now and January 2025, when he will have to hand over the reins to somebody.
The MAGA demands that he should immediately resign the office are without merit, but just exactly what you expect from the followers of Trump.
Now I get back to my main point. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen that 10- to 20-second clip of Biden struggling to finish that sentence about how his administration dealt with the problem of COVID (how ironic that it should be that topic at this point) and instead ending up saying he had managed to eliminate medicare.
It was pathetic, and we saw that same clip over and over and over, on both American and Canadian channels.
A balanced appraisal of the two men would have had us seeing the equal number of times when Donald Trump ranted about flush toilets, whether to be electrocuted or eaten by a shark, telling Russia to go ahead and do whatever it wanted to if NATO members didn’t pay up (seeming to believe that NATO is owned by the United States, and we’re all just renting).
And seeing Trump praising authoritarian leaders all around the world, and promising to pardon all the January 6 insurrectionists who did his bidding on that momentous day, trailing off into a stammer when the teleprompter failed, or there was a word he couldn’t pronounce.
Then there is the supreme irony of the fictional character that is Donald J Trump heaping praise on the equally fictional character that he refers to regularly as the “late, great Hannibal Lecter”.
If equal time had been given to flubs of speaking and logic, and if the reporting had always included the tally of truth to mistruth between the two men, then the commentary and some of the conclusions might have been more fair.
That said, I still respect President Biden for making the best decision that he could’ve made for the best reasons, which is in keeping with the character of the man who we have seen in public office for most of his life. He’s not always right, but he tries to be.
As for the Republicans, they’re choosing to put their faith in a convicted rapist, the man whom a jury of his fellow citizens (not the White House) found guilty of 34 counts of fraud, who stole government documents that he had no right to possess and refused to return them, and who is running for office purely to benefit himself.
I can only hope that the Grand Old Party gets exactly what I think they deserve in November.
