The comfort of an old shoe
The second Democratic presidential debate has been all but forgotten amid the national buzz and lingering numbness over two more mass shootings. The horrors of El Paso and Dayton hang in the collective consciousness, as they should. We should not wish to absorb them.
It’s really no great loss to the republic for the substance of the debates to be washed away. It is absurdly early for detailed coverage of an election still 16 months off.
And yet we know the periscope will not be removed. Because of it, probably no one is going to be able to sneak up on the front-runners and the press and surprise us all, like Gene McCarthy did in 1968 or Jimmy Carter did in 1976.
So what are we learning from so much coverage of so little?
Maybe this: No two elections are alike. But the pattern of American elections over time is discernible.
The pattern might be said to be action and reaction. Or, change and restoration. Or, experiment and rest.
After 16 years of experiment, with the New Deal and Fair Deal, the country chose Dwight Eisenhower and rest.
That rest included Ike’s disinclination to seek repeal of the New Deal.
Sometimes the pattern is skewed by events. At the near end of the 1960s, the country thought it chose rest with Richard Nixon. When that led to more unrest, the country tried experiment again, with Jimmy Carter.
What was odd about the last presidential election, in 2016, was that we followed activism and experiment (Barack Obama) with more activism and experiment (Donald Trump).
But then Mr. Obama, “No Drama Obama,” was temperamentally much closer to Ike than, say, Harry Truman, just as Bill Clinton could have been a liberal Republican president.
Mr. Clinton was also an experiment. But, once in office, he was no disrupter.He ran as the new and the outsider but he was a continuation of the establishment. He represented
a competent political class — more an extension of the George Herbert Walker Bush presidency thana repudiation or repeal of it.
Mr. Obama also ran as an outsider and governed as an insider. And one might argue that his establishmentism (he could not stand up to the Clintons when he was president!) was a disappointment for some Americans.
But Mr. Trump definitely ran to repudiate and repeal the Obama administration, and he has governed as he ran.
There are times when the nation wants the menu changed. There are times when it wants not just the deck chairs rearranged, but the old ship decommissioned andan all new ship of state built.
There are also times when wants rest; quiet restoration.
After much action and reaction, we usually seek a respite.
We shall find out, in 2020, whether the country wants to extend the Trump experiment — the first real reinvention of the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt — or whether it yearns for rest and restoration.
But the desire to slow things back down explain why Joe Biden,after a really terrible month, is not only still standing but still standingabout where he was.
Part of the explanation is surely tactical. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren split the “yeah, we’re socialists, what of it?” constituency. And Kamala Harris and Ms. Warren rather spoil it for each other.
Part of the explanation is also theater: With so many candidates and such restrictive and idiotic debate formats (no time to answer tough questions and too many self-absorbed moderators to keep track of), the combined “field” winds up looking like less than the sum of its parts.
That makes it tough for someone interesting, like Sen. Michael Bennet or Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, to it break out, like a Jimmy Carter. You can’t tell that either person is interesting.
Pennsylvanian Joe Sestak, an ex-admiral and congressman who really is interesting and might make a compelling candidate, was not even in the debates.
But there is something else going on.
Mr. Biden is awful in debates. He’s not a confronter. (Donald Trump is great in debates. He is a confronter.)
And Mr. Biden does look very old, because he is.
And he seems stunned when the young bloods come after him.
Yet his lead in the polls, which slipped a bit after the two debates, is mostly back.
Why?
I don’t think it is because Democrats are sure he is the best person to beat Mr. Trump. No one can know that. I think it is because they find Mr. Biden comforting. Indeed, he is running as a kind of national comforter: Good old Uncle Joe. He has suffered. He actually does feel my pain.
This may have more appeal at this moment than any issue: comfort, restoration, rest. An antidote to confrontation.
On the guns and mass shootings matter, Mr. Biden did not come up with new ideas, but he
was eloquent in a national interview(a goodformat for him) in his command of the issue. It was clear that he knew his way around it and knew what he thought. What was appealing was not his “answer” but his ease with policy and easewith himself.
If voters are looking for comfort, they will not care greatly about Mr. Biden’s gaffes. Eisenhower and Reagan gaffed, often, and it mattered to the public hardly at all. Voters tends to forgive gaffes in the known and predictable.
A lifelong Republican friend who has never strayed from that tribe, voted for Mr. Trump with some enthusiasm and likes most of his policies — and dislikes most of Mr. Biden’s — said to me: “I am just so tired of all the acrimony. I don’t want the country at war with itself.”
A lifelong Democrat said to me: “Biden is a deeply flawed candidate but a good human being who knows politics and government and understands the office of the presidency.”
That — comfort, and not assured electability — may be the appeal. Mr. Biden is an old shoe. And thismay be the way he endures.