Joe Biden released a short letter on Sunday, July 21, announcing, by dint of the disproportionate weight of the most valuable and influential members of his party, that he will not be seeking a second term as president. It came in just a single line, his decision did, yet from out of those few words establishment Democrats heaved an orgasmic sigh of relief at the likelihood that their chances to hold onto the executive branch next year suddenly and vastly improved. On the other side, Republican politicians, staffers, managers, analysts, pollsters and donors began to collectively sh– themselves, not only realizing that the focus of the entire brand’s message for this campaign season had become mostly obsolete (though some of that mud could still be salvaged to sling at Biden’s VP, the likely successor), but that Trump was now standing bright and glaring as the oldest, silliest and bumblingest person on the present political stage.
I mean, that’s as if everything he’d ever said publicly between 2015 and today hadn’t already been deemed idiotic by millions of intelligent, news-watching, internet-going, ballot-casting adults.
Which it had.
But, still—this Democratic candidate swap is likely to be one of the larger nails in the 57,000-nail coffin it’s taken to bury the guy’s political career.
With all that aside, there’s been something conspicuously absent from the recent, pointless news stories about Biden being unfit to govern for another term. And that’s talk of the actual role of the president in a democracy like ours.
Biden was too old? Too old to do what, I ask? Nod his head when someone gave him an idea, or presented him with any kind of feedback? What decisions does the president actually make in his own administration, otherwise? Does anyone know?
Mostly, being president involves being a face at a podium, and trying to convince people of the justness of policy. Just ask Ronald Reagan. He’ll tell you.
Back when he was alive, I mean. Or whatever you’d call it when he was in office.
This can be tiring and stressful, sure. But could an 82-3-4-year-old man do it? I guess it depends on the man. But Biden? Sure, why not?
Let’s compare the United States government to a similarly-sized, nameless corporation, for some perspective. (I mean you can’t, by most metrics, because America has more than double the assets, annual revenue and debt than the next business in whatever category you’re examining, but let’s try anyway.) At such a company, you’ve got a board of directors, which, on paper, isn’t really relevant here. Below that, you’ve got the executives, of which the CEO is the most powerful, hired by the board. Below that, you’ve got shareholders, consumers, and so on, which are equivalent to voters, depending on the strength of their affiliation and donorship to their political party, and which we’ll shelve for now.
Now, the CEO is in charge of the day-to-day operations. Depending on the size of the company, it’s often the case that others are involved at or near the same echelon; the duties of the chief often get relegated to equally qualified personnel, for the simple reason that there isn’t enough time or brain power in a day for one person to handle it all. Appointed proxies, therefore, step in and make the decisions that the chief would—proxies who keep that chief informed of their decisions, and of the latest news involving their departments. These are known as other executives, vice-presidents-in-charge-of-something, department heads, and so on. Moreover, within the federal government, there are also members of Congress and their aides who are responsible for introducing legislation into their respective chambers, in the hopes that it will move from bill to law via a favorable majority. Crucially, there are also the lawyers—members of the U.S. Office of the Legislative Committee, in particular—who actually take the sketches and half-assed ideas and commit them to the legalese required to make a bill a viable piece of future legislation.
This top-down relegation of duty is a huge aspect of both big business and big government. The president signs off on everything involving the country, but a myriad of well-informed individuals and seasoned political veterans are mostly responsible for running it. And that’s not even to mention the millions of federal employees down the line, who actually execute many of the tasks necessary for the government’s day-to-day operation.
Does the CEO know the names of all his or her employees? No. Does the CEO know everything that goes on everywhere at any given moment? Not even close. The big stuff, probably—but the rest? Not even close. Does the CEO hire and fire the higher-ups? Yeah. But a presidential comparison fails here, because this kind of HR drama is less likely during an administrative cycle, once a cabinet has been selected. Unless someone resigns, or the president is an actual (former) CEO who gets his rocks off and feels like a big man by firing people who don’t fall in line with his cortege of feet-and-ass kissers (*cough* TRUMP *cough*), officials are staying put right where they are.
I’d say the biggest difference between a president and CEO is that the latter is constantly monitoring his/her company’s bottom line (i.e. earnings), and, if it happens to drop, they instigate talks about what to do about it (rebranding, a new marketing campaign, introduction of new products, focusing on certain moneymakers over others, etc.). But, again, this is really just a bunch of head nodding after the ideas are tossed out, many of which don’t come from that chief’s brain, at all.
The president watches a bottom line, too (i.e. approval ratings), but there’s not nearly as much pressure if it starts to drop. A CEO can be fired at any time. A president, only really every four years. That is, unless one gets impeached, which, as we’ve seen, is still no guarantee of removal (*cough* TRUMP *cough*).
Once inside, a president is insulated. And what insulates them is the entire federal apparatus.
A few points to make against a perhaps-inept octogenarian remaining in office? Well, he’s in charge of the military, for one, which could be really bad if the mind starts to go (*cough* HITLER STALIN *cough*). However, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are ready to buffer any stupidly cataclysmic decisions the president may entertain (though, arguably, plenty of militarily “stupid” decisions have been made in the past by a completely sane president, they just haven’t been deemed “cataclysmic” by the public, or a more powerful country on the global stage, because there aren’t any).
Also, meeting with dignitaries and world leaders is important. But, even after his debate performance on June 27th, Biden still showed he had enough to finish a second term. I mean enough, if you understand the little it actually takes.
And, besides, there’s the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which could have been invoked to remove him had he started tilting too far out of his shower seat or whatever.
Remember when FDR ran the country, with polio? You probably don’t, but he kept it hidden from the public because it would’ve given off too many beta male vibes, or so it was speculated. Or how about when Woodrow Wilson’s wife ran the entire country, uncredentialed, when the Wilson himself was more or less incapacitated after a stroke? Girlbossing it proper, for about a year and a half, there.
I know this may go against the image people carry of America. The president may have been losing a step or two, sure, and this may have made people scared, or embarrassed, or insecure. But the illusion that the president has to be a badass—or even completely on the ball—is, well, an illusion. Plenty of countries around the world don’t have a “badass” in the role of president or prime minister. There are even folks who, with all their mental faculties still intact, make worse decisions for their country than someone who may think they’re taking a bus ride to a sleepover every time they go and go zoom-zoom in big blue white flying worm plame (*cough* KIM JONG UN VLADIMIR PUTIN *cough* THIRD WORLD DICTATOR *cough* EVERY U.S. PRESIDENT SINCE WORLD WAR II *hack*).
And while some of those nation-states may be at the bottom of the fish barrel, it’s not because a leader came in and, in a span of a few years, tanked the economy, alienated its allies, pissed off its populace to the point of revolution, or anything else. The setup for something like that takes generations.
What matters, when given the choice of only two candidates and their platform/policies, is how the incoming administration will lead the country in those directions, for better or for worse.
And, until things change drastically in this country, two candidates are all we have.
All this talk of Joe Biden stepping down was done by: 1.) The media, who knew it was profitable to do, 2.) People who didn’t like Joe Biden and were never going to vote for him anyway, or 3.) Democrats who were worried they’d lose the vote of undecided independents eyeballing Trump now because, in actuality, these are the voters who decide a presidential election every cycle. Democrats vote the Democrat ticket, Republicans vote Republican, and the rest are half-convinced, three months after a president gets inaugurated, that the other party probably had the better candidate, and likely will next time around.
It becomes each party’s imperative, therefore, whenever the stakes get too high, to brainwash them into thinking otherwise.
