Is President Biden, considered washed up after two previous runs that went nowhere, the right man to lead us out of our climate of toxic hostility and back to less partisan days? It seems, now, perhaps, he may be.
In 1992, Bill Clinton broke the 40-year reign of this country’s cold warriors. Presidents from Harry S. Truman to the elder George Bush had held the line against the perpetual threat of the Soviet Union. Then, Clinton took office, having evaded the draft in the late 1960s. For him, domestic and culture war issues were everything.
His term would be shared with his lawyer wife Hillary Clinton, who thought herself fit to become his co-president. Her disastrous handling of his healthcare initiative cost him control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections of 1994. Ideological, aggressively partisan, and unnervingly brash, Hillary and House Speaker Newt Gingrich squared off on issues such as abortion and quotas, divisive, unpleasant, and unrelated to concepts of national greatness.
Then, George W. Bush, calling himself a uniter and not a divider, ran as a “compassionate conservative.” But the perfect tie in which his election ended created resentment among those of the barely losing party. No good intentions could change that.
The war in Iraq, which followed the shock of 9/11, ensured that the Bush years would never be quiet. But the hope people sought in the election of Barack Obama was badly impaired by his embrace of a national healthcare plan. It caused a huge war in his first years in office, impairing his hopes to emerge as a truly national leader.
Meanwhile, Hillary, derailed by Obama in his run for the White House, toiled away as the nation’s first diplomat, while her ex-president husband was clearing the field of all possible rivals by subverting their sources of cash.
He could do nothing, however, about Donald Trump, the New York billionaire and one-time benefactor of Democrats, who had socialized with the pair but then became a Republican. Somehow, Trump mowed down a huge field of prominent candidates to become his party’s new nominee.
Not that the brash billionaire and the ex-president’s wife had nothing in common — both were now filthy rich, extremely dishonest, and happy to exploit women. It was a terrible choice that confronted the public, though each had his and her packs of fanatic supporters. It was always quite clear that given the choice between Trump and a generic Democrat who wasn’t called Hillary, Trump would be toast.
And no Democrat was more generic than Biden. From the moment Jim Clyburn picked him up from the dustbin of the 2020 campaign, it was perfectly clear that he would be the next president. He hadn’t come through two times before because he seemed far too normal than tougher and quicker candidates. But at this time and this moment, Biden’s normal was quite good enough.
