By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 vowing to “put America first,” by thinking first of this country’s interest and, in effect, saying “to hell” with the rest of the world.
That policy didn’t work out well for the Trump administration.
Along came Joe Biden in 2020 to declare to the nation and the world that he intends to restore the United States’ historic role as the world’s most “indispensable nation.” American voters bought the Biden pitch, tossing Trump out of office on Election Day.
So here we are, about to re-enter the world community as Earth’s lone superpower. But here’s the difference between the start of Biden’s presidency and the beginning of the Trump term as president: President-elect Biden intends to offer respect for our allies and likely will refrain from the insults that Donald Trump hurled at them.
Joe Biden brings a lengthy public service career with him into the Oval Office. He served for a dozen years as chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee before becoming vice president in 2009. Biden parlayed the personal relationships he had built around the world as Foreign Relations chair into an effective role as point man for the Barack Obama administration.
Trump’s pre-presidential experience bore none of what Biden is bringing into the nation’s highest office. He ran a real estate company with a checkered history; he became a reality TV celebrity. Trump pointed his career toward the goal of enriching himself. Public service? He had zero experience and, oh brother, it showed.
Voters said “hell no!” to returning the carnival barker to the White House. A majority of them grew tired of the chaos. They are weary of the constant embarrassment that Trump brings with his incessant Twitter rants.
The United States is far from a perfect nation. Perfection is an impossible goal to attain. However, a lack of perfection does not prevent the United States from reasserting its role as world leader.
President Biden will take the oath of office and then will get to work bringing this nation back from its ill-fated electoral experiment that delivered an unfit individual to the nation’s highest political office.