Justice Jackson Says the 'Most Horrible Thing I've Ever Heard' About the First...
The Trump Campaign Has a New Description for Joe Biden
Ungrateful Palestinians Complaining About US Aid Undercuts Their 'We're Starving' Narrativ...
Netanyahu to Biden: I'm Taking Rafah, Destroying Hamas, And You Can’t Do Anything...
Texas Just Got Some Bad News From the Supreme Court About Their Immigration...
Hitler the Stand-Up Comedian
NYT Once Again Acknowledges Just How Devastating Pandemic School Closures Were on Students
FDNY Won't Investigate Those Who Booed Letitia James, But Don't Expect Love for...
Joe Biden Is Back to Pretending His Granddaughter Doesn't Exist
Bob Good, Chip Roy Lead Letter Insisting Spending Bills Secure the Border
Biden in Trouble Not Just in Battleground States, but Battleground Districts
Here's Who Is Back in the Lead on Eve of Ohio Primary
One State May Ban Public Funds for So-Called ‘Gender-Affirming’ Care
Team Trump Makes Moves Following Fani Willis Decision
Laken Riley’s Father Is Speaking Out
OPINION

The Politics of Normality

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Joe? For president?

Yes, that Joe. As in, this weekend the New York Times ran an article with the headline: "Joe Biden Said to Be Taking New Look at Presidential Run."

Advertisement

Couldn't be. No! But here comes the Times again: "Hillary Clinton Camp Weighs Implications of Potential Joe Biden Challenge." A congruent note about the timing of all this: Donald Trump, headed toward a debate showdown on Fox News, handily leads the Republican field.

Biden? Trump? Who next? Mr./Ms. Jenner?

Let me poke an investigatory hole in the tent flap by remarking that 10 or 15 years ago I would not have considered voting for Biden in a contest for second assistant municipal dogcatcher. There seemed about him, with his hair transplant and dazzling dental work, an air of artifice and insincerity.

Here is the catch today: In a race with Donald Trump, I might well consider a vote for ol' Joe -- a strangely normal person in the context of 21st century political normality.

It may be that Trump benefits from that off-kilter view of the political world: politics as the center of human endeavor, with a solution for every problem; opponents as rabble to be marched over and ground down; lies and distortions as the stuff of discourse; and money as the measure of success.

And Joe Biden -- Barack Obama's vice president -- as the answer to it all? Hardy-har-har, as Jackie Gleason used to say back in the '50s, when Joe and I -- and Bernie Sanders, to boot -- were watching our first TV. Ol' Joe's defects, such as sounding off without thinking, are real enough; they just seem less glaring, less offensive and less intrusive when measured against the disposition of, well, for instance, our incumbent president.

Advertisement

Our incumbent president, who swept in victory seven years ago on a tide of promises to reconcile national divisions, regards himself as ruling by divine right. He's never wrong, it seems. All criticisms of his style and policies are outlandish and wrong. From a foreign land (Ethiopia), he assailed critics of the Iran nuclear deal. Announcing Monday a plan to reduce greenhouse gases, he announced that challenges to his methodology and goals were just "stale arguments." I, Barack, have spoken. The rest of you -- get your posteriors in gear, y'hear me?

It's wonderful to have a perfect president. But the limitations of politics, no matter who the president may be, are easy to recognize. Taxes and regulations suppress economic growth. Immense bureaucracies -- official (the Environmental Protection Agency) and semi-official (teacher unions) -- work to impose their distinct ideologies on a large and diverse population. Unelected jurists, by margins no thicker than a provolone slice, enforce their own outlooks and viewpoints. The ancient institution of marriage comes under new rules on the basis of one Supreme Court justice's poetic conception of How Things Should Be.

Hillary Clinton's (and her husband's) association with this new style of anti-democratic politics has been conspicuous. So has her reputation for -- shall we say -- shepherding the truth in the way she wants it understood by the dumb sheep in her custody. Polls show that the majority of voters find her untrustworthy: could it be that people have started to doubt the pleasures of being lied to and talked down to?

Advertisement

Lowlife screwball as he may be in some regards, Donald Trump seems at least not to be holding back his personal views. He seems, in fact, to relish large risks. From the fans' standpoint, how can that hurt, in a milieu where personal gain has come to outrank public service?

As with Trump, so with Biden, perhaps. He's just different enough -- sentimental, family-oriented, patriotic, religious in an old-fashioned Catholic way -- to stand out amid the new norms, looking more like somebody from the Eisenhower-Kennedy era than a spokesman for the Politics of Me, the Politics of "I, Barack," and of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton.

Never bet against the Clintons, a political adage has it -- an adage that says as much about our times and present ways as it does anything else. Unless the last word on that topic is still to be written.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Recommended

Trending on Townhall Videos