Jim Walsh
As a committed Democrat, it was difficult to watch the debate on Thursday night. The question now is, “How should Democrats react?”
The not-so-difficult answer to that question is, “rationally.”
The president of the United States is a leader. The president leads and gives direction to a White House staff that he or she selects. As chief executive, the president selects and the Senate approves a cabinet to guide the implementation of the nation’s laws and the president’s policies. The staff and the cabinet reflect the president’s values which, in the case of President Joe Biden, are very close to mine and far, far, far from Donald Trump’s.
The president is not an emperor, a potentate, a sultan, or a dictator, surrounding himself with vassals and servants to do his every bidding and to tell him how wonderful he is. The president and his team are responsible for the health and well-being of our country and, it must be said, the world. They do not control the events to which they must react, but they do and must take responsibility for how they respond to and shape those events.
President Biden is no super-sensitive egomaniac who thinks everything he’s ever done has been perfect and every woman he’s ever met wants to sleep with him or would gladly submit to his fondling. He has not made bankruptcy an art form, nor has he been found guilty of felonious acts. He hasn’t imported illegal immigrants to work in his businesses or serve him at Mar-a-Lago, as has Donald Trump. It should also be noted, too, that those poor illegal workers worked dawn to dusk on Trump Tower and got no days off, nor were they even fully paid!
President Biden cares about the future of the United States and the citizens of the world. The actions taken by this administration make that perfectly clear. The evolving climate crisis is reflected in a thousand ways, all over the world: starvation, war, panicky immigration, political uncertainty, a rise in right-wing populist regimes from Argentina to Turkey, Hungary to Myanmar. The relative stability achieved following two world wars in the first half of the 20th century is now dangerously threatened by overreach and inaction in the first quarter of the 21st.
Now, having watched Thursday’s debate, two questions come to mind.
First, “Which of the two would I prefer as president? The blabber-mouthed, non-stop, egocentric liar, or the inarticulate fellow who knows much better what’s good for the country and the world, but whose speech impediment has only become worse with age?”
There is no doubt in my mind on that one. I would vote for the good person over the felonious fraud.
But there is a second question. “Should President Biden follow in the footsteps of President Lyndon B. Johnson and decline to continue his campaign?”
I was involved in that 1968 campaign. It was the single most difficult campaign in my life and, at the end of it, I made a profound error.
I was 25 years old. I had been active in the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement. I had completed my undergrad work at our local state college and was struggling to stay in graduate school in New York while employed at Yale University in New Haven. As a result of my civil-rights commitment, I had supported LBJ in 1964 (the first president I was able to vote for) but, as a result of my anti-Vietnam War commitment, I could not support him in 1968. I flirted with Gene McCarthy’s campaign and then jumped wholeheartedly into Bobby Kennedy’s. According to Patricia Sullivan, in her biography of RFK, “Justice Rising,” MLK was ready to do the same thing. Then, tragically, the leaders of both my self-defining commitments, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated that spring. I was crushed. Cities were in flames. The Democratic Convention in Chicago turned into a Democratic nightmare… and in the shadows lurked Richard Nixon.
I made a glaring error in the 1968 presidential election. For reasons that seemed reasonable at the time, I did not vote in that election. There were many of us who made that fateful decision in 1968, perhaps even enough to have cost Humbert Humphrey the presidency. I will never make the error of not voting again. The perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. The better might not be perfect, but the worst might be lurking somewhere in the shadows, as he was then and as he is now.
So, the “rational” answer to my second question is, “yes.” Mr. Biden should step aside.
And not because he would not be a good president. I think he is fully capable of leading a committed team, as the head of the executive branch of government, sharing both “Democratic” and “democratic” values. I trust his wisdom and judgment, derived from long experience on the national and world stage. I trust his ability to bring a good, effective team together to pursue good and effective policies. However, I do not trust that the electorate will reward those qualities with a return to the highest office in the land.
My response is a practical one based on the circumstances at hand. My hope is that there will be a graceful exit from Biden’s current campaign followed by a spirited, respectful campaign from several quarters to choose the Democratic team that will prevent a disastrous, chaotic, MAGAnetic crash to the right — because that would be wrong.
But there is no question in my mind whatsoever — I will vote to defeat the lurking, shadowy felon who is a danger to us all.
Jim Walsh is the chair of the Nahant Democratic Town Committee. This column does not represent an official position of the Nahant Democratic Town Committee.
