Marilynne Robinson on Joe Biden
"I consider him a gift from God. All 81 years of him."
There is a quotation often (mis)attributed to Maya Angelou[1] which says that people will forget what you said and forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. I thought of this quotation when I read an interview with Marilynne Robinson in the New York Times last month. I haven’t read any of her books yet (I expect to rectify this soon), but I have talked to her in person. She was a plenary speaker at an academic conference I attended [2], and I was fortunate enough to converse with her there after hearing her speak. I remember she said in her talk something about how a novelist should love all of her characters, which impressed me at the time, and I asked her about that. I don’t remember any other details of what we said, but I was left with the impression of a wise and generous spirit that has stayed with me to this day.
The interview is provocatively titled, “Marilynne Robinson Considers Biden a Gift of God”, which comes from this part of the interview where she talks about Biden’s age:
Frankly, I’m less than a year younger than Joe Biden, so I believe utterly in his competence, his brilliance, his worldview. I really do. You have to live to be 80 to find this out: Anybody under 50 feels they’re in a position to condescend to you. You get boxed into this position where people who deal with you are making assumptions about your intellect. It’s very disturbing. Most people my age are just fine. What can I say? It’s a kind of good fortune that America is categorically incapable of accepting: that someone with a strong institutional memory, who knows how things are supposed to work, who was habituated to their appropriate functioning is president. I consider him a gift of God. All 81 years of him.
To this I will add, people age differently. Ronald Reagan was already showing signs of mental decline at 73, when he began his second term. In contrast, here is Dianne Rehm’s interview with Jimmy Carter when he was 90, and he is evidently still sharp in this video (as is she, aged 78 at the time). If you don’t have time to sit through the entire 51-minute interview, just click to a random point in the middle and watch for a few minutes, and you’ll see what I mean.
Biden’s age should no longer be an issue in this campaign. He is showing the physical effects of aging, but those who have worked with him closely in recent years all say that he is still mentally capable, including some who have had differences with him, such as Joe Manchin.
Reagan may have been in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease by the end of his second term. Woodrow Wilson was crippled by a stroke in his second term. If the republic survived those second terms, it can certainly survive a second term with Biden, who is elderly but still in command of his faculties and his administration. But could the republic survive a second Trump term? At this point, that is the real question.
[1] “Let’s Save Maya Angelou from Fake Quotes”, Rebecca Seales (2017), BBC News
[2] It was the 2011 Annual Conference of the International Society Of Macintyrean Enquiry, at which I presented a paper entitled “Neutrality, Pluralism, and Sex Education”, an excerpt of which I posted in this newsletter (“Eudaimonism and Pluralism”).
Addendum, 4 July 2024
A week after the Biden-Trump debate, with some Democrats and the NYT editorial board calling for Biden to drop out of the race, I stand by what I said above.
Before I say anything more about Biden, I must say that it is absurd that the media has focused more on Biden’s poor debate performance than on Trump’s blizzard of lies.
Now, should Biden step down? That depends on the answer to two more questions: first, can Biden do the job, and second, can he win?
If the answer to either of those questions is no, then he should step down.
If the answer to the first question is probably not, then he should step down.
If the answer to the second question is probably not, then he should step down only if a candidate more likely to win can take his place.
The answer to the first question is yes. Biden is, at present, mentally capable of doing the job of president, poor debate performance notwithstanding. If, at some point in the next four years, he becomes incapable, that’s what the 25th amendment is for.
I could have mentioned Franklin Roosevelt along with Reagan and Wilson as another example of a president who was incapacitated during his last term. The 22nd and 25th amendments (concerning presidential term limits and presidential disability and succession, respectively) were passed in response to events of FDR’s presidency. FDR was elected to a fourth term in 1944, but was in poor health and died on 12 April 1945, before either Germany or Japan had surrendered. Harry Truman proved to be an able successor, and again, the republic survived.
The answer to the second question is yes, or at least, it is not no. A Biden victory is still possible. I defy anyone to prove that Biden has no path to victory at this point. But is it probable? That is hard to say, but it is even harder to say who would have a better chance under the current conditions of this race. The burden of proof is on those who want to replace Biden with someone else, and so far, that burden has not been met.
I have no doubt that, should Biden have to step down after winning a second term, requiring Harris to take over, she would be better for the country, the climate, and the free world than Trump. I have grave doubts about whether Harris would be a more effective candidate for the presidency if Biden were to drop out of the race. What about someone other than Harris, perhaps selected at an open convention? Selecting such a candidate and organizing an effective campaign in the time available seems like a long shot.
To digress for a moment, it’s unfortunate Harris wasn’t selected for Attorney General instead of VP, though. That is the Trump vs. Harris matchup I would have liked to have seen. And had, say, Amy Klobuchar been VP, Biden might have felt comfortable dropping out of the race last fall.
But enough of that. “This is this.”