A 'historic' move to set up another one?

Will Biden passing the baton to Harris turn the political tide?

The word we continued to hear all day, all evening and this morning was this one: Historic.

The idea that President Joe Biden would decide, at this late date, that running for a second term wasn’t going to work for him or his Democratic party and that he’d willingly or unwillingly turn over the delegates that he had won to his Vice President Kamala Harris jolted everyone. Some said that was historic.

Elevating Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket has jolted the political world.

Judging from the seven middle-of-the-night tweets, this included the three-time Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump, who had counted on/looked forward to/was excited by the prospect of continuing to insult the 81-year-old stuttering, muttering man who snatched the Presidency from him for three more months. The opportunity for him to call our President, HIS President “stupid, stupid, low IQ, worst President in all of our history, etc.” in front of enthusiastic, cheering crowds at his rallies was going to have to come to an end. Somebody changed the subject on him.

It IS historic to have one Presidential candidate talk like that about a sitting President. There are, you would think, better, classier, more Presidential ways to make history.

We are, sadly, past the point where two parties with apparently vastly different visions of where America should go could actually have an intelligent, respectful discussion the way the Founding Fathers must have, setting all this up for us. Somehow, they were able to imagine a future that included all Americans, including those like the President’s and Vice President’s wives, that is, people who arrived here from elsewhere. They tried to look ahead, imagine how and where the country might go and for the most part, did a remarkable job.

What they didn’t anticipate was a future where a President could also be a felon. Or would need to demand immunity for all the acts he might intend to commit once he was in office. That was one concept that escaped them. That we have to concern ourselves with a President who might well do that, well, that’s historic, isn’t it?

Listening to what we heard in Milwaukee, all we have to do to make America great again is shut down the borders, toss every single illegal, undocumented immigrant back where they came from, stop taxing waitresses for their tips, give America’s millionaires and billionaires even more tax cuts, tell women to shut up and have the kid when they’re pregnant, make one phone call to stop the war in Ukraine, and another to put China on notice that 100% tariffs on their exports will balance our economy, give all of us a full tummy, a soaring 401K and we’ll all be dancing in the streets.

How will history view the Biden Presidency? Though just about every spoken head you heard from called it a consequential Presidency, Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski even cited a recent poll of historians who rated him 14th, three spots ahead of Ronald Reagan (Trump was dead last) we don’t know how history will view this in five, ten, twenty years.

Will they see it as a last-ditch Democratic move to save the hide of an aging, failing President from a humiliating defeat at the hands of what polls say is the least-likeable candidate in our history or a selfless, my-country-tis-of-thee move by a forward-looking President trying to ensure, no matter the personal cost to his legacy, that we remain a democracy?

There are some people who, for whatever reason, don’t seem to get the credit they should at the time they deserve it. Vincent Van Gogh sold but one painting in his life. Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” and Mark Twain’s “Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn” weren’t acknowledged as American literary masterpieces until years later. When it comes to ranking Presidents, you can never tell.

Even though almost all of his Cabinet wound up in jail, (you could look it up!) Ronald Reagan left office with the reputation as one of our most significant Presidents, definitely in the Top Ten.

Current historians, now that they’d had a longer look at the impact of his Presidency and what he did (and didn’t do), have dropped him to 17th. This is what history can do. Boston Red Sox outfielder Jim Rice didn’t get a hit in between retiring in 1989 and being inducted into the Hall of Fame 20 years later. But the perspective on his career changed. That may happen with Joe Biden, we’ll have to wait and see.

What President Biden did, taking over from the chaos of the Trump Presidency, a time when the major networks didn’t even dare broadcast the President’s press briefings because they were so filled with lies and misstatements, was considerable. He had to find a way to restore order and normalcy to our country, handle COVID, bring back our economy, keep and expand NATO to help Ukraine, reduce some healthcare costs and so many other things. Either the public can’t see these things now or the Democratic Party (and Biden) did such a miserable job of getting their message out, someone who had legislatively achieved what he had now somehow found himself being nudged/kicked/yanked out, even if he was old as sin.

Had Biden given a State Of The Union-type performance in the debate, the polls might be different now. But maybe not that different. Outside of maybe 1860 or so, our nation hasn’t been this divided, a place where neither side can accept any of the other’s points of view. We occasionally hear that we need someone “to work both sides of the aisle” but there really is no aisle, just two camps huddled on either side of the Congressional room, hoping for all-out victory. When they say this is the most important election of our time, even though they’ve said that many times before, this time it seems real.

The last time the Democratic Party threw up a woman candidate for President, it backfired in the Electoral College and we got four years of Trump. But we’ve had some time to think about things, to gain perspective. To see where we might end up.

Is America ready to get behind an African-American woman to defeat the rising forces of MAGA? Now hey, that would be historic.

Author John Nogowski will be doing a reading from “Nashua: How Ronald Reagan led us to Donald Trump” tomorrow night at Midtown Reader at 6:30 p.m. You’re invited!