How refreshing it was yesterday to hear from a real President of the United States:
“If there’s one thing we’ve learned as a country from moments of great crisis, it’s that the spirit of looking out for one another can’t be restricted to our homes, or our workplaces, or our neighborhoods, or our houses of worship. It also has to be reflected in our national government. The kind of leadership that’s guided by knowledge and experience; honesty and humility; empathy and grace – that kind of leadership doesn’t just belong in our state capitols and mayors offices. It belongs in the White House.”
Listening to Barack Obama’s 12-minute pitch for Joe Biden, it was a pleasure to hear a leader speak in complete, coherent sentences. That was my first reaction. My second reaction was relief. Because, finally, Obama has clearly decided that it’s high time to hit the trail and savage Donald Trump.
Granted, the Obama style of savaging is sly cerebral indirection. Check out the passage quoted above. When he says that Biden will bring “knowledge and experience; honesty and humility; empathy and grace” to the White House, he’s also signaling that the current inhabitant is a stupid, inexperienced, lying, bullying, graceless disgrace to this country.
Obama had distanced himself from the overpopulated Democratic race, because there was no upside to getting bogged down in intraparty spats. As the nation’s most popular Democrat, he didn’t want to waste his political capital. The wiser course was to nudge the party toward unity – in his words, to “accelerate the endgame” – at the point when the end was truly in sight. Once it was clear that Biden had the nomination in hand, Obama’s prime task was to hose down Bernie Sanders and tamp down the hostilities that hurt the party in 2016.
Bernie is now in the tent. So, today, is Elizabeth Warren. Granted, this doesn’t mean that Obama has everybody singing Kumbaya – lefty Twitter routinely derides Obama as a corporate warmongering sellout (check out #ThanksObama) – but, with his backstage help, Democrats are far better positioned than last time to take the fight to Trump. Biden may not be the perfect candidate (lest we forget, Obama sidestepped Joe and tilted to Hillary in ’16), but his timing is fortuitous – especially now that Trump is debasing himself at his worst, with a civilian body count that will soon exceed all American soldiers killed in Vietnam.
Obama has spent most of the last three years steadfastly resisting Trump’s attempts to draw him into the fray. Why bother, for instance, to dignify the idiotic lie that Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower? Why bother to dignify the idiotic lie, spun by Trump early in the pandemic, that his failure to conduct speedy diagnostic tests was really Obama’s fault?
But it’s clear, from his Biden endorsement, that Obama is jonesing to punch back. This passage was replete with dry sarcasm:
“I know (Biden) will surround himself with good people – experts, scientists, military officials who actually know how to run the government and care about doing a good job running the government, and know how to work with our allies, and who will always put the American people’s interests above their own.”
Love that word “actually.” But this passage was the clincher:
“One thing everybody has learned by now is that the Republicans occupying the White House and running the U.S. Senate are not interested in progress. They’re interested in power…Repeatedly, they’ve disregarded American principles of rule of law, and voting rights, and transparency – basic norms that previous administrations observed regardless of party. Principles that are the bedrock of our democracy…
“Pandemics have a way of cutting through a lot of noise and spin to remind us of what is real, and what is important. This crisis has reminded us that government matters. It’s reminded us that good government matters. That facts and science matter. That the rule of law matters. That having leaders who are informed, and honest, and seek to bring people together rather than drive them apart – those kind of leaders matter.
“In other words, elections matter. Right now, we need Americans of goodwill to unite in a great awakening against a politics that too often has been characterized by corruption, carelessness, self-dealing, disinformation, ignorance, and just plain meanness.”
A great awakening against disinformation and ignorance. Sounds like a start. Obama is in the house.