No one needs a dog more than the leader of the free world
Joe Biden isn’t in the White House yet. His inauguration is still over two months away. But already he’s made what could prove to be the most important decision of his entire presidency. He’s decided to bring his dogs with him.
Almost all American presidents have kept dogs. Yet for the past four years the White House has been a joylessly canine-free zone. Mr Biden has pledged to end this injustice straight away. He loves dogs, he says, because they teach us to “live in the now”.
This is very true. Personally, though, I think there’s a simpler reason why we love dogs so much.
They flatter us.
Put it like this. As far as your dog is concerned, your household has a strict hierarchy – with you right at the top of it. Your dog looks up to you. Admires you. Never questions your authority. He or she is willing to defend you from any perceived threat. You’re his or her undisputed boss and master.
And that, naturally enough, makes us feel good. Because let’s face it – we rarely, if ever, receive that kind of treatment anywhere else.
Take work, for example. Even if we’re the boss, it’s unlikely that our employees look up to us with the unfeigned, uncritical, eager-to-please admiration we get from our dog.
Our children don’t look up to us like that. Our friends and neighbours don’t. Our husbands and wives don’t (frankly, it would be weird if they did). And as for our cats – forget it. As I wrote in this slot a couple of weeks ago, cats view themselves as s our masters.
We are merely their ir highnesses’ humble le servants.
Our dogs, by contrast, ntrast, make us feel respected, cted, authoritative, totally lly in charge. In their eyes, es, if no one else’s, we can do no wrong.
Of course, since Mr Biden is about to become the he most powerful man n in the world, it may y seem odd that he should need the particular type of ego boost that dogs s provide.
Yet I suspect he’ll ’ll need it more than anyone.
After all, few of us look up to our political leaders – even if we voted for or them. No matter what
Mr Biden does as president, a large proportion of his countrymen will criticise him, ridicule him, rage at him. That’s just how it goes, for the leader of any democratic country. You have to live with the knowledge that you’re despised by millions of people you’ve never met. And if you change your policies in a desperate despera bid to please those millions wh who despise you, millions of others other will start to despise you inste instead. Which is why Mr Biden’s two German shepher shepherds – Champ and Major – will be so important to him. Whatever the American people end up sayi saying about his time in office, his dogs will think he’s the gre greatest president who e ever lived.
Four years ago, we all agreed g on one t thing. Donald T Trump’s win meant that it was time for the liberal elite to get out of their bubble, and start listening to the legitimate concerns of ordinary, decent American conservatives.
This year, however, Donald Trump has lost – and a liberal has won. Presumably, therefore, we must now draw the opposite conclusion.
In other words: it’s time for the populist elite to get out of their bubble, and start listening to the legitimate concerns of ordinary, decent American liberals.
No doubt there will now be a lot of soul-searching among the populist establishment, as they try to work out how they grew so out-of-touch with the latte-sipping, quinoa-munching people of America. We’ll read endless commentary explaining that hardworking centrist families are tired of political incorrectness, and are sick of having the unwoke agenda constantly rammed down their throats. We’ll read countless 5,000-word features in which intrepid reporters venture into America’s milquetoast liberal heartlands, where they listen earnestly to graphic designers and professors of gender studies complaining that under populism they felt forgotten and left behind.
A lot of commentators have argued that America is irreparably divided. Personally, though, I see reason for hope. After all, the main problem in recent years is that America’s two
tribes – the liberals and the populists – have found it impossible to see the other side’s point of view. They’ve been incapable of putting themselves in the other side’s shoes.
Now, though, that should surely start to change. Over the past four years, liberals have learnt what it’s like to be sneered at and belittled by people in power. And at the moment, populists are learning what it’s like to be spoiled crybabies who can’t accept that they lost.
Maybe these new experiences will help the two tribes finally understand each other.
A word of sympathy for Lee Cain. Boris Johnson’s former aide has been widely mocked because, in his first job as a journalist, the Daily Mirror made him dress up in a chicken costume and chase after Tory MPS. No article about him can resist mentioning it.
I’m not joining in the mockery, though. I know how he feels.
My first full-time job, at the age of 22, was as a junior writer for J17, a magazine for teenage girls. And every issue contained a feature called “Challenge Michael”, in which I would be ordered to undergo some bizarre indignity of the editor’s choosing.
I sang wildly off-key onstage with a boy band. I performed as a cheerleader for a rugby team. I had to “spend the day as a woman” (mini-skirt, heels, full leg wax). I even had to go out in the street wearing a Prince Charming costume, and see how many women I could persuade to be photographed kissing me on the cheek.
Now that Mr Johnson needs a new Lee Cain, I’ll make sure to list these experiences at the top of my CV.
follow Michael Deacon on Twitter @Michaelpdeacon; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion