Biden’s Decision — and his colleagues’ and news media’s decline
By Jim Sleeper
Elected officials claim to represent the will of the people, but “representing” their constituents’ best interests involves interpreting and finessing what those interests truly are. Voters should expect officials to make such judgments, not to follow electoral majorities blindly, Edmund Burke told his British Parliamentary constituents Representation: Edmund Burke, Speech to the Electors of Bristol (uchicago.edu) in 1774, explaining why his opinions and actions had to be taken independent of popular assumptions and whims.
Elected officials also move in herds, with fellow office-holders instead of making independent judgments: As U.S. House Speaker Sam Rayburn told members of Congress: “To get along, to along” to get anything done. In corrupted democracies like ours, there have often been donors to “go along” with to have any hope of getting elected at all. Surviving and succeeding requires more finessing than Burke required, even against the daunting odds of his own time.
Yet there have always been “Profiles in Courage,” Profiles in Courage – Wikipedia as Senator John F Kennedy’s 1956 book by that title showed in the cases of eight senators who defied their party leaders, colleagues, and constituents to follow their consciences and principles, risking and sometimes suffering political defeat for taking a wiser and longer view of their obligations and options against the odds.
Joe Biden presented such a profile until this past weekend, defying the polls, pundits, big donors, strategists, and masterful colleagues such as Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer. Maybe he’s following only his doctor’s advice now and is quitting the race because of physical and cognitive frailties. But until we learn more, my hunch is that the political pressures overwhelmed his resilience, which might have proved stronger and wiser than we were being told by baying “news” hounds whose own herd-like stampedes (into Vietnam, into Iraq, and much more) reflect a decay in their own capacities and performances more severe than Biden’s. Whose decline is more severe: Joe Biden’s or the news media’s? – The Berkshire Edge
Whatever my doubts about Biden’s integrity and judgments as a senator or vice president (and even as President, when he blundered in backing Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition in Israel), for the most part he’d risen to Edmund Burke’s heights as a leader and remained there ever since the Charlottesville riots of 2017 bared President Donald J. Trump’s Profile in Pathology as a sickness so severe and contagious that the republic may not survive it.
Democrats who’ve surveyed the odds and pressured Biden to quit – and especially Democrats now bidding to take his place — will have to transcend their own weaknesses as well as Biden did his before his colleagues, donors, the media, and too much of the public enveloped and devoured his prospects. I’ll support any Democrat against Trump; I’ll suppress my doubts about how members of the groups I’ve just mentioned handled old Joe; and I’ll hope that the day never comes when they’ll have to eat the words they used during the past few weeks.