April 19, 2021--The Un-Cool Kid

I know I've been asleep at the switch, but what's all this love for Joe Biden that Maureen Dowd and half the editorial and op ed staffs of the New York Times are sending his way? 

Here's a sample from Maureen from about two weeks ago--

Joe Biden never had a seat at the cool kids’ table at the Obama White House.

Heading into 2016 and 2020, if you told the hotshots from Obamaworld that you thought Biden would be a good candidate, they would uniformly offer a look of infinite patience, tolerance and condescension and say something like, “Well, I could understand how someone would think that.”

The message was unmistakable: Biden was not part of the Obama entourage. He was sort of a goofball and windbag. He was a member of an older, outmoded generation. In other words, uncool.

The West Wing attitude was that Biden should simply be grateful that the Great Obama had handed him a ticket to ride. Biden was viewed as a past-his-sell-by-date pol who needed the president’s guiding hand to keep Uncle Joe from making a fool of himself as vice president.

So now comes a delicious twist: President Biden is being hailed as a transformational, once-in-a-generation progressive champion, with comparisons to L.B.J. and F.D.R. aplenty, while Obama has become a cautionary tale about what happens when Democrats get the keys to the car but don’t put their foot on the gas.

Thus spoke Maureen Dowd. 

What to make of Biden being referred to in the same reverential breath as F.D.R. by Times opinion writers Frank Bruni and David Brooks as well as most of WAPO's political columnists.

Many days even the Wall Street Journal folks are chining in.

What's going on here? Is Biden a malaprop-generating late-night joke or already an historically significant president? All before his first 100 days in office?

Don't feel any pressure, Joe. You're too old and experienced not to know this can come crashing down on you (and us) by the end of the week. See Russians in Ukraine, China in the South China Sea, and Kim lobbing missiles at Japan or Seattle.  

I know. To get through this I need to get a grip.