After scrutinizing 15 Presidential elections I’m impressed with the rapid mood shift the recent change in the field has stirred.
I think we can surmise voters were ready for a change of attitude. Harris and Walz have prompted enthusiasm, to be sure, but they’ve flooded the arena with hope, a sense of optimism, even mirth.
They struck a golden truth when they labled the maga team as “weird.” By comparison and by tone Trump and Vance come off as Slug and Sluggard.
There seems to be a bit of fun to the election cycle now and I’m sure the psychologists can spin a lot of theories. From my view of having been on campaign trails, it doesn’t seem as desperate, teetering on the brink of a bunker mentality anymore.
This seems to be the year America has decided there is an age limit on Presidents. But we should memorialize that one hour before Joe Biden did one of the most courageous and personally hard to accept actions, “passing the baton,” he was full on engaged closing the deal in getting American hostages, home.
There is no doubt Joe is old, and not as swift or glib as he was, but he was and is still executing the duties of the oval office with as much skill, and historic achievement as we have seen in decades. This “old man” has accomplished legislative miracles, stabilized the nation, infused economic development that will change the American workplace and our infrastructure over the next decades, and asserted American and democratic leadership for the world. He has been steady and calm. But we live in a time when almost everything is performative, and when phones and algorithms have warped our sense of reality. Unfair though it is, in the long run his selfless act is probably best for everyone. He will be remembered well.
Now would be a good time for voters to look at the extraordinary PBS Frontline examination of “The Biden Decision.” It is searing, tough, told in a no holds barred honesty. It is an American tragedy story, a kind of Irish tale of a political warrior who wanted only to serve.
dangling
There is another PBS serving that you can also find at the LBJ Library web domain. Live from the LBJ Library, Woodward and Bernstein. It plays in two 30 minute segments. The conversation led by author/historian Mark Updegrove looks at the Watergate era 50 years on. The inevitable conclusion is the modern Republican party do not possess the courage and decency of the 1970 Republicans who included the godfather of conservative Presidential ambition, Barry Goldwater.
50 years this week, those men and women went to their President and told him he was going to be impeached and convicted because they could no longer support him. Nixon resigned.
History always gets the last word. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward remind us of a time when honesty counted. Those reflections are illuminating to us about who, what and where we are today.
See you down the trail.
