Selfishness in a crisis does not serve

So I watched the debate. For a good bit of it that's more than figuratively true. Seeing that Biden appeared befuddled, I turned the sound off, to see whether Trump's phony gibberish was disorienting me. Nope -- Biden as leader didn't show up. 

I'm sympathetic to the old guy. He's been a good president, achieving far more with less broad support than most in my lifetime. He's got us as far on the climate sustainability path as a very reluctant, oblivious, nation would allow. His projects lean toward better lives and inclusion for all, with necessary attention to those who have least. Not perfect, but on the side of the good. 

I've read bushels of commentary -- what a mountain of anxiety and sometimes pure BS! I'm still prepared to work in the fall at winning the battleground state of Nevada (as I have every cycle since 2018) for the Dems and Biden, if that's where we end up.

But in my heart I'm with Bill McKibben -- environmentalist, founder of the old people's mobilizing group Third Act, and Presbyterian Sunday school teacher. Here's an abbreviated bit of his reaction to the debate. 

Give Joe some room

[With Thursday's debate} ... the tectonic plates shifted. And in ways that open up the possibility not just of decisively defeating Trumpism, but of pulling the country out of the polarized death spiral we’ve fallen into. But it’s going to take a while to play out, I think—time that we should grant Joe Biden, who’s at one of those hard, interesting, decisive points that come in the course of a life and of a nation.

... What happened of course was that Biden looked feeble. Yes, Trump lied with his usual feral energy, and yes the CNN moderators were utterly inept. But both those things were givens. What wasn’t a given was Biden’s performance. He lacked the agility and the poise to handle Trump’s onslaught, and it wasn’t close.

... An ineffective Biden would be a hundred times better (and a hundred times less worse, which might be more important) than any version of Donald Trump.

But again, that’s not enough. Politics is about changing people’s minds, channeling their intuitions, organizing their moods. Communication is the main tool for that. And Biden is no longer a consistently effective communicator. He’s got good people around him, he can and has made wise decisions, I am not worried about the operation of the Republic under his care. But clearly he can no longer count on his ability to rally Americans.

... There’s no shame in that. Most people never have that ability. Biden himself has never been a great speechifier, but across his long career he has always been able to communicate an effective in-your-corner regular-guy I’ve-got-this message. He’s been reassuring. He’s been a father figure, trending towards cool grandfather. But eventually you’re a great grandfather, and your hard-working days are behind you. Which is fine. You still have plenty to contribute, but that contribution is in the form of counsel, not leadership; it’s in the form of support, not of dominance.

He’ll be reluctant to admit it, because we all are reluctant to admit, even to ourselves, the things we lose as we age. (One of the odd secrets of aging is that you really don’t feel older from the inside). ...

... And I think Biden will get this. He’s a patriot, he’s spent his life in service, he clearly understands that the country is more important than any person. So he will steel himself to the task of watching the tape of last night’s debate, and he won’t make excuses. And then he may say ‘I’ve done my part well—I rescued America from Trump and from covid. And now I have one great duty left, which is to pass on the reins. So I’m freeing up my delegates to choose someone else.’

That’s not easy to do—save for the sad example of LBJ, no one’s ever really had to. It will take courage, and self-knowledge, and it will take time. But there is some time, thank heaven. Give him some time. It’s not that far from someone deciding that they need to leave their home and move into a retirement community; it’s an admission that one time is past and another coming.

... It’s not like we [would not] have time to adjust to someone new—our current news cycle guarantees we’d know all about a Whitmer or a whoever within days, and we wouldn’t have time to grow tired of her before November. She or someone like her would unleash the energy of the possible, at a moment when in fact we have huge possibilities. On energy, for instance: Biden has done a beautiful job of working the IRA through Congress, but the polling shows he’s never managed to make its importance sink in. He couldn’t explain its power last night, couldn’t summon people to a future that runs on the sun. That’s a crucial task, a way of giving young people hope as they face a daunting future. Not just young people—really, most Americans keep saying they’d like a fresher choice for our future. Suddenly there’s a moment when that could happen.

People keep saying ‘Biden won’t step aside, so we need to support him.’ And if he doesn’t we must.

But the very thing that makes him worth supporting—an old-fashioned commitment to something more than himself—is the thing that may convince him (and his wife, who actually loves him) to do the bold and interesting thing. To do the thing that could mark a new moment in our political life. If Biden chooses to stay in, so be it—I’ll work my heart out for him, and ungrudgingly. But even if he manages to win, we’ll still be stuck in the same poisonous paralysis we inhabit now. Someone sometime has to break us out of this stalemate, and it might as well be that right man for this moment, good old Joe Biden.

Trumpism is selfishness—that is its parts and that is its sum. With a powerful act of selflessness Biden can break the evil spell that selfishness has cast. It would be a remarkable thing for an old man to do, and a hell of a way to cap a career that began in the 1960s. Ask what you can do for your country!

Emphasis in the original.