Biden’s Campaign of Relentless Decency Continues
Our still-new president, Joe Biden, ran his campaign throughout 2020 on a message of what I have labeled Relentless Decency. His character projected all the opposite traits of the person he was running against. The American people chose his reassuring empathy over the exasperating divisiveness of his opponent. Despite the events of January 6th, his relentless decency showed up on January 19th when he and the vice president, along with their spouses, held a quiet vigil at a softly-lit reflecting pool on the national mall in Washington, DC. Relentless Decency underlay the entire presidential Inauguration. It appeared again on February 23rd when he, the First Lady, the Vice President, and the second spouse, all gathered at the White House and held a moment of silence in remembrance of the over 500,000 people who have died of covid-19 in the last year, then the president addressed the nation again expressing his particular brand of goodness.
A vaccine roll-out that is as successful as I’m hearing and reading lately (i.e. more than a hundred million vaccines in the first hundred days, another vaccine set for approval with still more to come); emerging signs of an economic turn around; reopening of schools; growing prospects for further legislative wins bolstered by increasing popular support; a historic 2022 pick up a seats is certainly not unthinkable.
The Uniter in Chief’s best hope may be to shame enough persuadable Trumpistas and moderate Republicans into becoming less obstreperous and into rejoining a renewed and more decent American union. This may sound too gleeful, certainly for one or even two successful presidential terms. But a follow-on Harris administration may be its beneficiary. Think FDR and HST, who together led a generational recovery after the crises of the Great Depression, WWII, and advent of the Cold War.
If the times make the man and the woman, the crises caused by the Trump administration — financial corruption, governmental norm and institutional malfeasance, pandemic, economic wreckage, educational disruption, and general incompetence, not to mention insurrection— pave the way for a millennial-supported recovery.*
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory