Finally, American Politics Are Boring Again
An appreciation of how wonderfully, revolutionarily boring Joe Biden has been as president
What’s President Joe Biden’s position on the legal travails of Representative Matt Gaetz? Where does he stand on the removal of some Dr. Seuss books from publication? What public comments did he make about the Japanese golfer who won the Masters last weekend? What does President Joe Biden think about NFTs? After copious research, I believe the answers to those questions are none, he doesn’t, he didn’t, and he almost definitely has no idea what that is.
I keep trying to articulate just what we are currently experiencing as a country, and I think I’ve found a good comparison. Do you remember that feeling you would have after standing far too close to the stage at a big concert? You would emerge after 60 or 90 minutes of having your eardrums pummeled, and all the workaday noise of the city — the honking taxicabs and the street-corner conversations and the rumble of trains — would sound oddly tinny and distant. You’d wonder, would your ears recover after the beating they had just endured? Could you ever hear normally again? And why did everything suddenly seem so quiet?
Donald Trump was a foghorn blaring over the landscape, drowning out all other observable sound. He had little to say other than his ritual of racial grievance, scientific illiteracy, and hunched suspicion of all foreigners, but insisted on repeating it ad infinitum at maximum decibel levels. I would like to think that Trump lost reelection because his titanic failures of experience, orientation, and understanding were laid bare by the catastrophic response of the U.S. to Covid, but I suspect that playing an equal part in his dismissal was the president’s unnerving similarity to a poorly behaved barbecue guest. After years of his presence, many Americans were simply tired of having to listen to his harangues.
Enter “Uncle Joe.” In the public persona, Biden is a gabby, garrulous Irish uncle, prone to dramatic gaffes and slightly embarrassing enthusiasms. He was the guy who told Barack Obama that the passage of the Affordable Care Act was a “big fucking deal,” the guy whom The Onion depicted as washing his Camaro shirtless on the White House driveway. Life is long…
