Taking The Win

I’ve long said Joe’s been a great president who’ll always put the country first.

Millions of his fans now believe he should do the selfish thing: take the win and pass the torch.

I say “the selfish thing” because he would:

> Go down in history as one of our greatest presidents.

> Avoid the frighteningly real risk of being remembered, instead, for extinguishing the torch.

(Sure — like Russia and China, we’ll have elections.  We’ll have courts.  We’ll have a legislature.  Even North Korean has those things.  But — like those countries, the ranks of whose leaders Trump hopes to join — we’d have a strongman bent on total control, very possibly for more than two terms, with a son in the wings ready to extend his rule.  The Statue of Liberty weeps at the thought.  The Founders roll in their graves.)

> Get to relax.  God knows he’s earned it.

Because the President is known more for his resilience, modesty, empathy, love of family, and love of country than for his selfishness — the man took Amtrak for decades, and have I ever told you my grilled cheese story? — doing the selfish thing, if he does it, will be hard.

And one more reason to admire him.

Because the only metric that matters here is who has the best chance of winning.  If it’s Biden/Harris, that should be our team.  If it’s Harris/Shapiro or Harris/Coons, that should be our team.  If a Whitmer/Warnock or a Whitmer/Wes Moore team emerges from a mini-primary, that should be our team.

No matter who our team is, I’m all in.

Maureen Dowd’s take, in case you missed it.

The Escalation Trap POTUS needs to avoid.

OKAY, IF YOU INSIST

Picture it: Vice President Biden is headlining our annual LGBT dinner, this one in D.C.  I ask one of his long-time aides if there’s anything he wouldn’t expect us to know that we could surprise him with. 

“Believe it or not, he likes those little miniature grilled cheese sandwich hors d’oeuvres.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Perfect.”

I call the hotel and ask that they prepare a plate of these things for the photo line portion of the evening.

“Oh.  Let me see whether we can do that,” he says.

“Whether your chef can make a grilled cheese sandwich?” 

“No, I’m sure he can do that.  But it’s more complicated than that.”

It turns out that any time the Vice President is going to eat something prepared outside his or her normal routine, a high-ranking naval officer needs to be in the kitchen for the 24 hours before.  An admiral, I think.  My memory has gone a little hazy on this.  Maybe not a full admiral, and maybe not a full 24 hours.  But something like that.

“Seriously???” I said on the second or third phone call when I was told, sorry, this four-star hotel could not prepare a little plate of grilled cheese squares for the V.P.

 “Yes, I’m very sorry.”

So now it’s the night of the dinner and Charles and I have purposely hung back to be the last ones in the photo line, to have a moment alone.

“I’m so sorry!  I had hoped to have a plate of little grilled cheese sandwiches for you.”

“Oh, I love those things — how did you know?”

So I tell him the story.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” he laughs, rolling his eyes.  “Like someone’s really going to try to assassinate the Vice President.”