A patchwork quilt of irrigated farms of the Great Plains passes beneath my porthole window of this Southwest airliner. Five-eighths of my heart occupy the seats to my right, as I consider the political earthquake that shakes my beloved land as I cross it at 30,000 feet.
The breaking news dumped onto my e-mail inbox and social media feeds as we were being admonished to put away our electronics for take-off. No time to download his full statement or read any reactions. All I know is that President Biden has decided to pass the torch to our vice president and a new generation of leadership for America. He has withdrawn from his sure nomination in favor of Kamala Harris. It is a selfless decision that hearkens to another great president 56 years ago who similarly put the good of the nation over his own dreams. As a lifetime political enthusiast and history buff I am experiencing several hours of purgatory as I wonder how the nation is reacting to this patriotic decision and the prospect that America might inaugurate its first post-Baby Boom president and its first female president next January.
I have been a admirer of Joseph Robinette Biden for many years. He is such an admirable person and always a patriot. He had to overcome much to even learn to make a simple speech in school, not to mention finding the courage to put himself forward for the US Senate (youngest elected Senator in many years) despite his speech impediments. Then before he could even take office the horrible shock of losing his wife and daughter in a terrible automobile accident and having to tend to two injured young sons and face raising them on his own while commuting back and forth via Amtrak daily between Delaware and the nation’s Capitol.
After a long and respected Senate career, he served Barack Obama and our nation loyally and closely for eight years as vice president.
When in 2016 our nation’s highest office was taken by a would-be autocrat through a combination of Russian interference and a campaign of social media lies, Joe Biden stepped forward as the person best placed, despite his advanced age, to stop the fascist-supported candidate. He saved America simply by being elected in 2020.
But he did so much more than that.
After four years of chaos in foreign affairs and at home and the first serious attempt to overthrow our republican system of government; with America’s reputation smeared in the feces thrown by Trump and his MAGA supporters in America and abroad; Joe Biden brought us out of a financial mess and a worldwide pandemic, and despite worldwide inflation managed to keep American economic growth above the inflation rate — unlike most countries of the world. He rebuilt our alliances abroad, and stood up to the Putins of the world.
Driving to the airport we saw so much evidence of the economic growth and infrastructure improvements underway because of Joe Biden’s leadership. US 411 is lined with huge development. I have friends who have benefitted right there in my hometown from all that growth. There are highway projects in progress all along the way from Rome to the Atlanta airport.
America and the world are tremendously better off for Joe Biden’s leadership of the last almost four years.
Were he a few years younger with that outstanding record he would be a shoe-in for re-election. But he is eighty-one, and like his opposition (who does not have speech impediments but rather intellectual and psychological ones) sometimes misspeaks or has difficulty getting his words out as he wants.
So now we have a new prospective nominee.
Our vice president is ready. After a career as a prosecutor and Attorney General and Senator and years now a heartbeat away from the presidency, she has shown herself a practical moderate progressive who has been at Joe Biden’s side as he has navigated a VERY closely divided nation through a pandemic and an economic recovery and through a rebuilding of NATO and America’s place as the leader of the free world. They have managed to negotiate an amazing amount of good legislation including a remarkable amount of bipartisanship, given the current state of Congress.
And now I see mountains and deserts below us. What a magnificent land is America, but other lands are beautiful. Others have plains and forests and cities and farms. Their skies are as blue. But our America is more than all that. We are a land of “We the People”. The highest office in our land really is not the presdident, or the Congress, or the courts. The highest office in America is citizen.
For the three little girls sitting next to me, and for your little girls and boys, for the posterity mentioned in that first great sentence of our Constitution, this citizen wholeheartedly stands behind Kamala Harris to be our next president and I pledge as much as I possible can of my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor in the next hundred days or so to the noble cause of helping her preserve our republic, uphold our alliances, and bring more peace and prosperity to America and the world.
I call on all of my friends to step out of your comfort zone. Now is the time to come to the aid of America. Now is the time to work and vote for a small-r republican future for our posterity.
Campaign and vote blue you Arizonans down there below us. [There are jobs even for introverts — please ask!]
Campaign and vote blue you Georgians back home.
Campaign and vote blue Americans.
