"It was a quiet day yesterday. Until it wasn’t...."

It was a quiet day yesterday. Until it wasn’t.

I was on the back deck reading Ron Chernow’s bio of George Washington (irony alert) when I heard my phone buzz. A friend had texted me. Biden was out of the race. I’d heard this rumor before so asked for confirmation, and he send me a screen shot of the President’s letter. There it was.

It wasn’t a surprise. Or at least it shouldn’t have been. I think it was the right thing to do. But it could not have been easy.

I just felt…..I don’t know…..sad. Overwhelmingly sad.

Biden had committed the unpardonable sin of getting old. And he had to do it in front of the world.

My sister call me a few seconds later. We were both thinking the same thing.

Our late Dad.

One day in particular. My father had released a book. A collection of his newspaper columns. There was a public book signing at a local book store. We had started to notice that he was slowing down. It took longer for him to say what he wanted to say. He’d hesitate and have to find what had always been there before. But he was able to push through it.

And then suddenly, he wasn’t.

He was sitting at a table, signing books. A lot of old friends were in line, and he sometimes needed a prompt as to who they were. As he signed we’d whisper in his ear the name to write down, or even how to spell it, and even his own signature started to get wobbly. He knew he was struggling. But he wouldn’t, couldn’t admit it. His friends pretended that everything was normal, and so did we. But it wasn’t. He’d be ok for a few, and we’d exhale, and then he’d look to one of us for help, and our hearts would break all over again. All our fears seemed to coalesce that day. He never got better. There was nothing we could do about it. As time went on he’d sometimes become so frustrated with his own mind that he’d savagely hit himself in the head.

If somebody in that bookstore that day made some snarky comment about his mental agility, I would have bludgeoned them to death with a nearby chair and slept soundly for the rest of my life. Thankfully, that wasn’t the world we lived in back then. And thankfully, my Father was not the President of the United States.

Joe Biden is an honorable man. He’s not perfect. He makes mistakes. He’s not a natural speaker. A lifelong stutter has caused all sorts of PR problems for him. But he’s scrappy. He’s faced down personal tragedies that might have destroyed weaker men. He’s done his best to live up to the ideals that our nation was founded on, and served this country to the best of his ability for more than half his life. When he has fallen, he has gotten back up. He has character. He has empathy. He’s kind. He deserves our respect, and our thanks. History will judge him favorably.

Following Donald Trump in the White House is a bit like moving into the crazy cat lady’s house and being asked to clean up all the shit and piss to make it habitable again. Trump had desecrated every institution and alliance and history book that was placed in front of him, and finally was forced out of a capitol ringed with national guard troops to protect the republic from his own culty supporters, perhaps the sort of thing George Washington was worried about when he voluntarily stepped aside as President after his 2 terms in office. Such was his reputation and power that he could have held the job for life. Like the King he had vanquished. But that was not what was best from our fledgling democracy. Washington put country over self. It was inspiring to see a bit of that yesterday.

Biden fixed as much of the mess as he could. He surely created a bit of his own, but under his guidance the White House at least has adults monitoring the hallways.

It’s Kamala Harris’s time now. She’s a seasoned former prosecutor. Trump is a seasoned current felon. To me, that’s the story. That’s the campaign commercial. Lather, Rinse. Repeat until November.

MAGAs started melting down almost immediately with the news, filling social media with vile racist and misogynistic gibberish (attacks my friend and author Seamus McGraw suggests will be “wind in her (Harris’s) sails”), not very surprising coming from the gang that now has to throw away their “Joe and the Ho” and “Let’s Go Brandon” merchandise, and are still waiting on their gold sneakers. But probably not a good long term strategy for the next debate, which Trump is already trying to get out of, whining about how “unfair” ABC is and demanding that it be held on Fox instead. With Biden out of the race, Trump’s recent unhinged goofy shit, like his repeated embrace of the “late great Hannibal Lecter” at campaign rallies, might start attracting as much media attention as Biden’s recent lapses.

And wouldn’t that make things interesting?

I mean, I THINK he knows that Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character. But I bet Vegas would give me odds that he doesn’t.

We’ve got ourselves a whole new ballgame boys and girls.

In a bit…

—tf