The incessant news cycle about the Trump administration was interrupted oh so briefly by the news about President Biden. First we had the publication of the book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson entitled “Original Sin” and arguing that Biden’s cognitive decline in the 2nd half of his term was subject to a cover up. And, that his decision to run for a 2nd term was disastrous. And then, eight days later, there was the announcement of Biden’s prostate cancer, and that it had metastasized to his bones.

So, first of all, I have been saying since Biden’s election that he should serve as a one-term president. That would have rid him of the need to direct his policies to ensure his re-election, and it would have given the Democratic party four years to find a successor. But nobody listened to me (or all the rest of us who were saying the same thing).  No surprise there.

Secondly, it’s not surprising that Biden wanted to run for re-election given how badly Biden wanted to be President in the first place.  For those who have forgotten:

• Biden ran in 1988 (the Bush v. Dukakis election), and his campaign came to an end when Biden was accused of using parts of a speech by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock without proper attribution. (A plagiarism scandal. How quaint!)
• Biden ran again in 2008, the same year that Barack and Hillary fought it out for the nomination. But Biden impressed Barack during the campaign enough so that he chose him for his Vice-President.
• And in 2020, of course, he won the election with the largest popular vote count in history (despite what Trump and his acolytes have insisted for all these years).

He clearly enjoyed being President, and was quite good at it.

But I’ve also been saying for quite some time that we should have elected Biden when we elected Obama, and we should have elected Obama when we elected Biden. That’s on us. That’s our mistake.

And finally, when it became clear that Biden had lost his fastball in the first debate, he did the agonizing thing — even though it took a while to get him there — and dropped out in favor of Kamala Harris, who turned out to be a very good candidate. 

Yes, a full four-year process might have led to a different candidate. Gavin Newsome? Maybe. Joshua Shapiro? Maybe. Gretchen Whitmer? Maybe. But there is no reason to believe that any of these candidates would have done better than Kamala Harris did. This country — for whatever reasons (and we will continue to discuss this) — was absolutely hell-bent on electing Trump. Again.

And now we will have to let Trump practically destroy the country before the fever may break — at least for those who are not hard-core MAGA — and the country can return back to some form of sanity, if not exactly prosperity.