By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
I am going to suspend reality for a few moments and pretend I am working for a newspaper and that I am going to write an endorsement for president of the United States.
Here is what it would say:
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Americans took a gamble in 2016 when a businessman/TV celebrity became president of the United States.
The gamble did not pay off. Indeed, the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has been an abject failure as the nation’s chief executive. Accordingly, Americans have a chance in just a few days to make a serious course correction.
They can do so by electing Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president of the United States.
Biden served two successful terms as vice president during the Barack Obama administration. Prior to that he served for 36 years in the U.S. Senate, being elected to the body at the age of 29; he would become old enough to serve by the time he took office.
Joe Biden’s love of country has been on full display for his entire time — nearly 48 years — on the national stage.
He vows to restore our nation’s soul. Biden wants to revive what the late Sen. John McCain — one of Biden’s best friends — used to call “regular order” in the governing process. Donald Trump knows nothing about regular order and the slipshod governance that has resulted has delivered all the proof we need of Trump’s ignorance about government and his inability to learn how it works.
Whereas Trump has spoken directly only to his base of supporters, Biden vows to be president for all Americans. He said at Gettysburg, Pa., just this week that he will be president even for those who vote against him. When has Donald Trump ever pledged such a thing?
Trump has botched the nation’s pandemic response. Biden plans to institute a national policy on Day One of his presidency. He vows to institute a mandatory mask policy on all federal property. Biden promises to fast-track testing nationally and to push Congress to invest in the equipment required to protect all Americans from getting infected.
Biden wants to re-engage our allies. He intends as well to challenge our adversaries, not coddle them the way Trump has done. Biden promises to return to the Paris Climate Accords and to return the United States to the World Health Organization.
Let’s also take note that Joe Biden has chosen a capable, dynamic running mate in U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, who clearly is not the flaming lefty that the Democratic ticket’s foes have sought to portray her.
Biden has experience helping revive a fallen economy. He took on that task by managing the nation’s response to the Great Recession in 2009, the first year of the Obama administration. It succeeded famously. He vows to deploy that experience to revive an economy that has collapsed under the weight of the pandemic.
Joe Biden, lastly, will deliver a sense of empathy and compassion to a grieving nation. We have lost more than 200,000 of our citizens to a killer virus. Donald Trump has been MIA as comforter in chief. Joe Biden has suffered intense personal tragedy already, with the death of his first wife and his young daughter shortly before he took office in the Senate. He feels the pain of those who suffer during this pandemic.
The nation needs that compassion from the president.
Joe Biden isn’t the perfect candidate, but we shouldn’t demand presidential perfection. We should demand — in the context of this election — that we choose someone who knows how government works and who is capable of working across the aisle with those of the other party.
That candidate is Joseph R. Biden Jr. who, with Kamala Harris as his governing partner, can deliver the goods for a nation that has suffered from too much government incompetence.