Stuff That I Have Noticed #42: Lincoln, Roosevelt, Ramius*, Mancuso* & Biden
* In case you don’t recall who these men are see The Hunt for Red October. Ramius was the Russian and Mancuso the American; captains of their respective U-Boats both went counter to the advice of their “experts” and were proved correct by outcomes.
President Joe is swimming against the tide. President Joe is bucking the odds and getting criticized by the right and the left for not only his new ideas but for things he said and did over thirty years ago.
Do you think now the same way you thought thirty years ago? I certainly do not. And neither does President Joe Biden!
Another well worn cliche: We – except for some politicians – live and learn. President Joe has done both.
Jonathan Alter in the Times (12 April) does the FDR comparison. I’m taking a stab at the one with Honest Abe.
Elizabeth and I have been watching CNN’s Lincoln series and it’s amazing how many “facts” I thought I knew about the man they are shattering. I won’t go into detail, watch the show or read up, but suffice to say that much of what I “knew” about Lincoln is pure myth.
What I also learned is that, like Captain Ramius, Captain Mancuso and President Biden, President Lincoln often went against the advice of his “experts”.
Having served in the senate from 1973 until 2008 when he became VP, President Biden knows more about how the system works (or doesn’t work) than any living politician. (I love writing President Joe Biden!) And he is beloved by many of his fellow pros and respected by virtually all of them. If a learned committee were to be formed to name the perfect human to be POTUS during this ultra-turbulent period, Uncle Joe would be their finding.
Politicians of all persuasions are criticized, even scorned for “flip-flopping”. This is often ridiculous. When new information is learned or circumstances change it is stupid to hang on to outmoded ideas and “positions”.
To hold the same views at forty as one held at twenty
is to have been stupefied for a score of years. – Mark Twain
When society and mores (the essential or characteristic customs and conventions of a community) change the intelligent person adjusts their beliefs and actions to accommodate the revised reality.
Here’s a personal example: When I was in high school one of my first girlfriends was a Peruvian with rather brown skin. While my mother was quite racially enlightened for a person born in 1905 and raised in the hills of Virginia on a farm with neither running water nor electricity, she did believe in social separation of “colored” and white people. To her, Graciela was colored therefore I should not date her. Her primary argument was that if we married, our children, being of “mixed-race”, would suffer and have a hard time in society. By the standards of 1951 that may have been true. I really wish that Mom had lived to see a brilliant, mixed-race man become President and an icon of class and style. Barak is doing okay in America.
This brings us to gay marriage. Remember that breakthrough? Joe even got out ahead of President Obama.
And much to the surprise of virtually everyone, once inaugurated Mr. Biden turned into a liberal firebrand! With a fifty-one senate vote majority (including the inexplicably waffling Joe Manchin) the possibility of getting important and much needed legislation enacted is a reality. Here’s another area where the Lincoln, Roosevelt, Ramius and Mancuso comparison resonates for me. “Too much, Mr. President.” “That’ll never work, Joe.” and other similar pronouncements by the “experts” and he just plows ahead like Larry Csonka (aka The toughest man on the field) overrunning and shedding would be tacklers and making big gains.
After the colossal, narcissistically pathological one-man train wreck that preceded him, this wise, empathetic and (surprisingly) brilliant man is commencing the herculean task of rescuing our Republic from the brink of suicidal disaster.
We need to do all we can to be worthy of his leadership.
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