The old man and DC

He’s an old man, and he has gone 367 days without  catching Covid…

I don’t know why allusions to Hemingway have crept into my mind. Biden doesn’t really resemble Santiago from the novel with whose title I’ve taken liberties. And I don’t even like Hemingway.

Yet there may be similarities there. As you recall, Santiago, the eponymous old man, is a fisherman who has gone 84 days without catching a fish. But then a huge marlin takes his bait, and Santiago strains every sinew in his dilapidated body to fight the fish for two days. Finally he manages to harpoon it and win his potentially lucrative victory. But it turns out to be short-lived.

The old man straps the fish to the side of his boat and sails home. Alas, sharks, smelling the marlin’s blood, pounce and devour the fish, leaving only a bare carcass for the despondent Santiago to cry over. In the end, he realises he’s too old for such robust challenges.

Would it be too far-fetched to suggest that echoes of this plot may soon reverberate through Washington? For the marlin read Trump, whom Biden defeated square if perhaps not unequivocally fair. That fish is still thrashing about, but for now the old man can be satisfied with his work.

But who are the predators? The thugs who tried to storm the Capitol yesterday at best qualify as lantern sharks, the smallest species. They smelled a weakness and attacked, yet only managing to blemish, not to reverse, Biden’s triumph.

However, there was a weakness to smell, and sooner or later the whale sharks of China and Russia may catch a whiff. And closer to home are lurking other giant predators, in the shape of the US economy, international markets and currency speculators. All of them are sure to pounce on any sign of weakness, real or perceived.

It’s time now to get on the terra firma of politics and economics. Roaming that terrain are numerous challengers and adversaries who can smell even a droplet of blood with nothing short of shark-like acuity.

They won’t have to sniff for too long. Biden will be one of the weakest presidents in US history, as he would have been even had he ascended to power in 1988, when he first ran for president. Now 78 and showing signs of senility, he’s a walking target not only for his foes but, more important, also America’s and, even more important, the West’s.

Age isn’t a disqualifying factor in itself. Yes, as any septuagenarian, especially one in the later stages of that period, will confirm, advanced age brings about a diminution in cognitive ability, memory and energy levels. The numerical expression of this decline must vary from one person to another. Ten per cent? Twenty? Thirty? More?

Hard to tell, but then percentages don’t tell the whole story anyway – it all depends on the initial height from which the faculties descend. Thus, Aquinas would have remained an extremely intelligent man had he lost, say, 20 per cent of his intellectual capacity. Yet the same loss in an average Millwall FC supporter might produce a clinical idiot.

There have been examples of statesmen functioning effectively at an old age. Konrad Adenauer, for example, presided over Germany’s economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder for short) well into his 80s. But the baseline of his abilities was drawn immeasurably higher than Biden’s. Joe is no Konrad Adenauer, as I’m sure even his late mother would have acknowledged.

He is a typical DC apparatchik, of a leftward bent. In a political career spanning the best part of half a century, Biden has shown no sign of any discernible ability for anything resembling statecraft, although he’s doubtless a shrewd backroom operator in both Delaware and Washington.

Biden’s supporters call him a centrist Democrat, a designation Hemingway would describe as a movable feast. Being a centrist Democrat today isn’t the same as being one in the 1950s – the whole spectrum has shifted towards the red end. For lying to the left of Biden aren’t Adlai Stevenson types but the likes of Ocasio-Cortez, hard-left extremists who in the past would have been outside the party and now find themselves in its mainstream.

Biden’s VP to be, Kamala Harris, will be that group’s envoy to the White House during his presidency. In all likelihood she’ll act as de facto president or at least as a powerful éminence grise. She’s sure to drag Biden in the right, which is to say left, direction, not that he’ll be grabbing the railings along the way.

All the good policies of the Trump administration will be reversed, such as cutting corporate taxes and leaving the Paris Accords, UNESCO and WHO. Obamacare will be back, and this time it’ll be firmly ensconced in law. The word Only will be implicitly added to the slogan Black Lives Matter.

The global warming hoax will acquire a religious status, along with politicised ecofanaticism. That’s bad news for the fracking industry that was making America, and potentially the West at large, free from the clutches of unsavoury hydrocarbon producers.

Nor is it just the economy. For Biden, who didn’t mind touting his Catholicism during the campaign, is an avid supporter of every un-Catholic, not to say anti-Catholic, policy. He champions homomarriage and unlimited abortion reinforced by a repeal of the Hyde Amendment (banning the use of federal funds to pay for abortion).

All that is bad enough, but, getting back to the original metaphor, the real danger will come when the whale sharks of China and Russia begin to circle around the Biden administration.

At a time of existential global threats, America, the self-appointed Leader of the Free World, must respond with intelligence, courage, energy and resolve. The president should embody such qualities at their most crystallised, and I doubt that even Biden’s staunchest champions really believe he fills that particular bill.

I for one fear that avoiding Covid so far will go down as the president-elect’s greatest achievement.