'Do Something' Is Not A Plan Or Wise Counsel Or A Way Out
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/do-something-caucus-joe-biden
In a complicated and challenging world that exceeds our capacity to understand it, there is comfort in certainty. Political journalism and sports journalism have many unfortunate parallels. Sports itself offers the comfort of reducing the world to what happens between the lines on the field or pitch court, where there are set rules and assigned enforcers of those rules. We can tune everything else out. But politics is not a sport.
An election about whether the United States will continue its two and half century long experiment in representative democracy, where a convicted felon is running to return to the office he tried to seize through extralegal means, where the specter of a new form of fascism looms on the horizon is suddenly consumed by a political death watch for the only person at present standing between democracy and another Trump term in the White House. At some level it makes sense. The stakes are that high. But only up to a point.
I’m not trying to mount a defense of Joe Biden here. I still feel like the noob at the book party 15 years ago gently playing devil’s advocate for a sense of proportion. The sheer volume of stories about Biden’s age and possible infirmities is a choice. Floating the possibility that Biden has Parkinson’s on the basis of unconfirmed insinuations is a choice. Postulating that there’s been a White House coverup of Biden’s true condition based on flimsy evidence is a choice.
We should remain open to the evidence of such things. We should be critical and skeptical of Biden and his White House and of the news coverage that is feeding on and perpetuating itself. Above all, we need to maintain a sense of proportion when everyone around us has lost theirs.