Good morning. It's Friday, July 26, 2024, the day of the week when I offer quotations intended to be uplifting or elucidating. Today's lines are neither, really, but they do tell us something about the state of political discourse in this country these days, which is to say, it's all-partisanship, all-the-time.
Operating within narrow borders prescribed by each political party's talking points du jour makes it difficult for politicians or their media allies to be original, or even sound intelligent for that matter. Their observations can be funny on occasion, even if they are unintentional, which was the case with some of the friendly over-the-top descriptions of President Biden's Wednesday night address from the Oval Office. And not only from politicians. One CBS correspondent gushed that the 10-minute speech was Biden's "love letter to America."
Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, who helpfully prefaced her review of Biden's speech by blaming Donald Trump for "the worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War," couldn't say enough good things about Biden. "An elegant speech at an emotional and very moving moment for this president and I think timelessly for the presidency," Maddow said, adding, "This is a tentpole for what patriotism and selfless service looks like."
The plaudits flowed from Hollywood, too. Yvette Nicole Brown pronounced Biden "a dear man" who "gave an amazing speech." She added, "You have that Jimmy Carter vibe. There's no higher compliment I can give."
Brown was obviously sincere – and I praised President Carter myself earlier this year – but this is not a comparison modern presidents have aspired to: In his last year in office, Carter's job approval rating was even lower than Biden's.
Republicans, as you'd expect, had a different reaction. I'll highlight one of them in a moment.
Although he has an iconic Democratic Party name, Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana is very much a Republican – a staunchly conservative Republican, to be clear, and an outspoken public official. Sen. Kennedy is a guy who, to use a contemporary phrase, is not afraid to say the quiet parts out loud. He was not impressed by Joe Biden's decision to hand the 2024 Democratic Party nomination to his vice president. Nor did he think much of Biden's Wednesday night speech. Here is why Kennedy believes Biden decided not to run:
"The two over-arching reasons, of course, his speech last night notwithstanding, are: Number one, the president, regretfully, can't finish a sentence without taking a nap. And number two, he was about to get beat. He was polling right up there with cholera.
"Now, I respect President Biden when he said, ‘I won't get out of this race unless God tells me,' and I'm a Christian, maybe God talked to him. But I think it's equally probable that God's voice sounded suspiciously like Barack Obama's."
And that is our quote of the week.
