[This is] the best of all possible worlds. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz^[as quoted in Voltaire’s Candide.

You might have fantasized about an Obama presidency, perhaps, sailing on a generational wave of optimism, radically transforming American society by bending the arc of history toward moral justice, or whatever…No: it’s the gaffe-prone friend of insurance companies and segregationist Senators, the old guy who still goes to Mass for non-performative reasons, the non-threatening Scranton-made moderate who history perversely decided would become the agent of an attempted American revolution from the left. Andrew Sullivan in a Daily Dish Column titled The Strange Fate Of Joe Biden, The unlikeliest would-be revolutionary in American history

But we’re not talking about reality. We’re discussing the federal government. Sarah Vowell in an editorial in the New York Times.

President Joe Biden is the best President we could have right now.

I didn’t always feel this way, at the beginning of the primary, way back in 2019, I said: Joe Biden is probably the most extreme Trump is the [only] problem candidate and his campaign has a sort of restoration of virtue vibe about it. To my ear, that sounds like “Let’s go back to business as usual” and although I don’t see Biden getting the nomination, he has a lot of money and, seemingly, a big part of the Democratic Party Establishment backing him including the mainstream media. I say that because the questions at the debate had a distinctly pro-Biden, anti-Sanders cast. I went on to say that Biden, doesn’t speak about the oncoming Climate Disaster with much conviction and I hate his take on international relations… Lastly, he is really too old, really really and his age is showing; watching Biden stumble around mid-sentence on some semi-memorized bit, it’s hard not to laugh, he gets so befuddled. However, my opinion of Joe Biden has changed.

Part of my change in attitude is because I was wrong about Joe Biden and part of it is because Biden has changed in reaction to the changing world. I was wrong about Biden because I didn’t see him fitting the criteria that I think a President needs to bring about change. I used to think we needed an outsider like Barack Obama or Bill Clinton to bring a fresh viewpoint to Washinton but outsiders don’t bring change, insiders do. Don’t get me wrong, I still am a Barack Obama fan, he is the public figure I would most like to have dinner with, but Obama as President was a disappointment. He wasn’t the revolutionary President the country needed. Obama ran as a Revolutionary and I think believed he would be a revolutionary, I certainly did. I thought he would be a revolutionary President when I volunteered for his Primary campaign and I still thought he would be when he was elected President – his slogan was Change We Need, after all – but I was wrong.

I began to realize that during Obama’s second term. But I wondered Why? Why aren’t we getting the change we were promised? At the time, I began to come up with a proto-theory, Outsiders are not agents of change which covered Clinton in addition to Obama. Since then, I have become even more convinced that change has to come from an insider, somebody who knows and is not intimidated by the inside the beltway elites. Although I didn’t see it in January, a year and a half ago, Joe Biden is today’s ultimate insider. I think that he has a chance to be another Roosevelt (and he knows it, BTW ).

Back in November 2019, after the fifth Democratic Debate, I still didn’t think Biden could win. As an aside, at the time, President Trump acted as if Biden was his biggest threat, and I thought Trump was wrong or faking or something. End aside. After that debate, I wrote: the heavy hitters were Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, with supporting roles by Harris, Buttigieg, and Gillibrand. Bernie, in my opinion, is the most influential candidate up there, pulling almost everyone else left, still, I don’t think he will get the nomination. It just feels as if his campaign has peaked and I think that’s why Harris went after Biden first, thinking he is the top dog. Speaking of which, watching Kamala Harris eviscerate Biden reminded me of Trump taking on Jeb! only much more nuanced. Whereas Trump made an ad hominem attack, saying something like “Look at him, just low energy, he won’t get anything done”, Harris went after Biden’s actions and made them personal. As an aside, when somebody starts out with, “I don’t believe you are a racist, but…”, it probably won’t end well. End aside. The thing is, I think Biden is a racist, almost all of us are. It is how we react to that innate racism, acknowledged or not acknowledged, that sets us apart. In Biden’s case, I think he reacted defensively which is why Clarence Thomas’ accusation of “High-tech lynching” was powerful enough to get Biden to close those long ago hearings.

However, thinking back on Biden’s Vice-presidency, Biden, like Trump had a sense of the electorate that Obama and most other inside the beltway politicians didn’t, and still don’t. Biden felt the economic and cultural change and dissatisfaction in the country just like Trump did – and Bernie, for that matter – which is why then Vice-President Biden came out for gay rights before Obama (which caused somewhat of a kerfuffle). Biden could feel the country change in its general tenor towards Gay Marriage. I don’t think that makes Biden a Liberal in the Bernie Sanders sense but, rather, that it illustrates that he can actually see/feel what’s happening in the country and react to it, maybe because he spent so much time commuting on Amtrack. I do want to quickly point out that the difference between Donald Trump’s and Joe Biden’s reactions, however, seems to be that Joe Biden reacts from a place of compassion rather than anger, perhaps that is because has had so many setbacks that he can acknowledge other people’s pain.

By the time Joe Biden got the nomination, I was getting on board the bandwagon., writing: Wow! The Democratic Platform Is Encouraging…[Biden] is an old man with, seemingly little interest in Climate Change and a long history of being on the wrong side of what I consider the major problems facing our country and the world today. However, when times change, people change, sometimes; this has been a time of huge change, and Joe Biden seems to be changing with it. He is running on a platform that is substantially to the left from where he started. At last, he is taking the Climate crisis seriously, saying; “To reach net-zero emissions as rapidly as possible, Democrats commit to eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 through technology-neutral standards for clean energy and energy efficiency. We will dramatically expand solar and wind energy deployment through community-based and utility-scale systems. Within five years, we will install 500 million solar panels, including eight million solar roofs and community solar energy systems, and 60,000 made-in-America wind turbines.“

Now, in a sort of semi-State Of The Union speech, President Biden has doubled down on Climate Change Is The Problem (along with, as he said: “The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War”). What I didn’t take into account is that Joe Biden believes in government and, when we have national problems, that Government Is The Answer. In that regard, President Joseph Robinette Biden also seems to be the answer.