I’m generally down on politicians. They tend to be a bunch of self-serving, low-functioning hypocrites who don’t like or can’t do real work, haven’t done well when they’ve tried and pay lip service to the needs of their constituents while keeping the highest possible public profile.
There are exceptions as Henry Kissinger pointed out when he said,
“Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad
reputation.” So where does Joe Biden fit into this arithmetic?
I’ve taken to calling him The President Next Door.
That, after viewing and contemplating the State-of-the-Pandemic Address last
Thursday evening. It was the first anniversary of the Declaration of
Pandemic by the UN’s World Health Organization which is always ready to move in
on an issue before the lease is signed and stay too long after it expires.
There was Joe from Scranton, being the guy who knocks on
your door on a Saturday morning -- but not too early, mind you -- and asks to
borrow your lawnmower. Judging by his demeanor, his words and his
decision to walk up to the lectern without aids or fanfare, this question comes
to mind: Would you lend him the mower and expect him to be the kind of
neighbor who’d return it in the same condition he borrowed it but refill the
gas tank first?
My answer is “yes.” Well… it would be yes if I actually
still owned a lawnmower and a lawn to mow. Biden is, after all, still a
politician. In fact, he’s done scarce little else in what some might
consider a pretty long working life.
Another politician, Joe Stalin, agreed on a few things with
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at Yalta. But he also added “trust but
verify,” a significant statement plagiarized by Ronald Reagan without
attribution and to his credit.
So for now, let’s give the green light to trusting Good
Neighbor Biden. Unless, of course, he has his eye on your spouse or your
maid or manservant -- unlikely as that may be.
Trust does not require enthusiasm. It does not require
complete agreement with practice or policy. It does not require ignoring what
he says or does in the future. But it does mean there’s a high
probability that we as a country won’t be worse off when his lease on the White
House expires in a little under four years. And it also means he’s unlikely to
try and dominate the airwaves the newspapers or the social media as “the other
guy” did and would like to again.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome
to them. ®
Any Questions: wesrichards@gmail.com
This post was grown on a small family farm and was not
processed through Artificial Intelligence. But we DO use organic Spellcheck.
© WR 2021
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