(Above: Edgar Buchanan as Uncle Joe on Petticoat Junction, the CBS sitcom which aired from 1963 - 1970. Here he is in his rocker at the Shady Rest Hotel, the show’s setting.)
Edgar Buchanan portrayed the role of Petticoat Junction’s Uncle Joe - who was a doddering, aging, often befuddled avuncular presence - with a lack-of-preening precision. The other characters showed him a lot of patience even though he’d doze off a lot and his befuddlement could cause the laugh track to erupt in a kind of delighted derision. Buchanan was 60 when the series started and 67 when it ended. The nation’s own Uncle Joe - President Biden - is 81 now, will be 82 if inaugurated, and 86 at the end of a second term. He plays his doddering, aging, befuddled role with a surfeit-of-preening precision. We who value our constitutional republic and the democracy that underpins it have shown him a lot of patience with his often avuncular yet increasingly addled presence, but we are no longer shaking our heads and chuckling at his “just being Uncle Joe,” nor are we delighted to deride him now along with our political enemies.
This election is no laughing matter. It has never been a televised form of entertainment even though Trump and his MAGA/GOP audience filled with cultists and fans as much as voters thinks it is, as if it were an offshoot of his earlier reality show based on the lie and the con that he was a successful businessman instead of the charlatan he’s always been, a fascistic and bigoted and sociopathic and autocratic and now felonious one. I have always been struck not only by his fans and cultists’ darkness and the agency he gives it, but also about how unserious they are about the presidency. It’s all a kind of larcenous lark to them.
The debate the other night was admittedly a form of televised entertainment so it played into Trump’s television celebrity strengths even though almost every sentence was a lie being lobbed into the camera from an alternative fact-free “reality.” But it was the construct to which Biden’s own team tethered us all when they proposed it. It failed him. He failed us. There is no spinning that. That failure now underpins his run for re-election.
Within the first ten minutes, the nation saw in Biden a feeble, doddering elderly gentleman to whom a family would never give the keys to the car much less the one to the Oval Office. He told us he “beat Medicare” at the end of a rambling early answer that was making no sense and even turned a rebuttal about abortion into some sort of argument against his own immigration policies and even said that women are raped by their sisters. (Go read the transcript.). I could go on as I wish the debate had not. It was both maddening and heartbreaking. I came away deeply sad, but even deeper was my anger that the Democratic party - and Biden himself - have brought us to this moment. I still think President Biden is himself a deeply decent person and Trump a disordered and indecent one. But there is an indecency as well to this decent man, President Biden, remaining in the race at this point and besmirching his legacy and, yes, his own decency. If he stays in the race - which I hope he will not do - I will still vote for him. Because it is the decent thing to do. But that vote will be more a vote against Donald Trump.
I think that is where we are now.
Very few people alas after that debate performance - and, yes, it was performative as is running for the presidency itself which is different than being the president but still one has to be able to do the former in order to proceed to the latter - will be voting for Joe Biden but against Donald Trump. We often decry the dystopian aspect of Trump’s appeal but that is now Biden’s as well. He is the less dark alternative in his dodderingly daring us not to vote for him because he thinks he is the best candidate to defeat Trump. Nothing points to his confused state of mind - his own narcissism that is not disordered nor malignant like Trump’s, but dangerous now nonetheless - more than that. It no longer seems as if he thinks that democracy is at stake but his own narcissistic need to believe that he is its avatar, the one who can deliver us from the anti-democratic darkness of Trump and his fascistic followers rather than enabling them with his continued insistence that he is our deliverer.
It is asked why so many - The New York Times Editorial Board, Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Ezra Klein, The New Yorker’s David Remnick, Claire McCaskill, Joe Scarborough, Donnie Deutsch, Nicholas Kristof, Michelle Goldberg, et al. - are not asking why Republicans aren’t insisting that Trump drop out of the race since he is a felon and has been convicted of sexual assault, behavior he has even bragged about. He is a sociopathic liar who faces sentencing on July 11th for his 39 felonies. Donald Trump is a truly bad man mentored by the evil Roy Cohn. He is a bigot and a blithering idiotic blowhard who himself often is addled and has trouble putting sentences together and keeping track of his own confused thoughts. But that speaks to the GOP’s own politically disordered indecency. Its institutional indecency at supporting this indecent man is baked into the political equation of who and what it and the Trump cultists and their collaborationists who make up that party are. You can be a nice person and support Trump but not a good person. Niceness is also performative; goodness is embedded in one’s character. The GOP’s not calling for Trump to drop out of the race points to its lack of institutional character. The GOP is basically now an autocratic criminal enterprise fronted by a sociopath, a dystopian cult steeped in darkness and disorder.
But calling for Biden to step aside is on some level a test of decency. There is something indecent about insisting that he just continue and thus put those of us who believe the future of our country is at stake through such anxiety and worry and sadness and anger each time he appears without a teleprompter. There is a reason he has so seldom held a news conference or sat for an interview that calls for answering in coherent sentences. This is not about having a stutter or a stammer. There is a reason he did not do the Super Bowl interview. His team didn’t believe he could do it without this version of him showing up.
At some point this is no longer a version. This is who he is. We have reached that point.
We are at the junction of this race - don’t get your petticoats and Calvin Kleins in a twist - when this decision has to be made. If our Uncle Joe decides he’s not ready for the Shady Rest then, yes, I will be all- in to vote against Trump. But if Biden does get re-elected get ready for four years when the White House itself will be turned into the Shady Rest, an aptly named actual rest home more than a fictional hotel. Get ready for a laugh track filled with derision. There will be no delight - nor has there been any in writing this column.
Onward …
I’m in the minority. Now conspiracy theories are being spun. Having grown up in a big political family, I listen to my dead father - politics takes strength and patience. We will absolutely lose if we dump Biden - far more than fraught. Watch him in N Carolina the day after. Let the fucker lose - let the Irish out. No more to lose. And the conversation will change in four days
I too will cast my vote for Biden. Trump? Has seduced half of Americans with his snake oil sales. I’ve never allowed him to draw me into his lair . The First Lady is complicit in keeping his health a secret. Be it Parkinson’s , stroke or ? He’s not capable . We need a golden goose. It’s not Newsome ! I’m a native CA . He’s attractive, very, as is his very bright wife Jennifer and lovely children. He can’t beat Trump. Anthony Blinken. Michelle Obama . It’s going to be a wild ride