Joe Biden is Bland. That’s His Job.
It’s what we voted for.
I just hate it when my husband’s right. We were talking about politics in the kitchen, this time about everyone jumping on Joe Biden for not doing enough. “Part of me wishes he would stand up to the conspiracy mongers,” I said. “He needs to show them who’s boss.”
That’s when he said something we all knew, but forgot:
“I don’t know. The guy’s job is to be bland, isn’t it? He’s the one who has to get along with everyone.”
He had a point.
We wanted a boring president.
Maybe you remember all those chats we had this year about how desperate we were for a dull president.
Well, we got one. We wanted someone we didn’t have to pay attention to all the time. We were sick of the last guy’s inflammatory tweets, the constant bullying, and the childlike behavior.
Joe Biden is the opposite.
He’s doing what we wanted. He’s not responding to every critic. He’s speaking in a calm, measured tone. He’s talking about high-minded ideals like democracy and trust. In other words, he’s acting more mature than everyone else. That’s what a president does, remember? They rise above everything. When the rest of us are freaking out, they’re not.
It’s a little weird, but we’ll get used to it.
Joe Biden knows you don’t feed the trolls.
The only way to deal with conspiracy theorists is to handle the pandemic and get people back to work.
When people are busy at their jobs and hanging out at bars, they don’t have time to fall down rabbit holes on the internet. Until then, arguing with them makes things worse.
Joe Biden gets this.
He’s working on the problems, not feeding the trolls. The rest of us know this too, even if we do it anyway. Acting mature is boring, but it works. It’s going to take a few months for everyone to calm down.
We need someone who gets along.
Richard Nixon was the first person to use the phrase “the silent majority.” He was referring to everyone who has an opinion, but doesn’t engage in all the hot debates. There’s always a silent majority.
Spend a few minutes on Twitter, and it’s easy to think Joe Biden needs to be louder, like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Biden can’t do that.
He was elected because he comes across as a reasonable guy. He can have a halfway normal conversation with someone like Mitch McConnell, because he knows they don’t believe half of what they say on television. He doesn’t treat them nice because he enjoys it. His job is to get along with everyone, including the people we can’t stand.
It’s hard.
We’ve gotten used to hot heads.
Donald Trump won in 2016 because he shoots his mouth off. America loves bullies. We love hating them even more. We wanted to see what would happen if we put one in the presidency, and boy was it a disaster. While we were all fighting, the country fell apart.
Some of us regret it. The rest of us can’t let Trump go, not just yet. We need a target for our residual anger.
The problem is that we’ve acclimated to Trump. Part of us loved taunting him and insulting him behind his back. It made us feel righteous. From our politicians to the sweet Anderson Cooper, he dragged everyone down to his level by the end. Now we have to climb back.
Let’s shut up and enjoy the quiet.
We all laughed and cheered when Joe sighed at Trump during the debate and said, “Would you shut up, man?”
It was a moment of vindication, albeit in the worst presidential debate in American history. Biden spoke for us all.
Now that’s over.
We know things can’t go back to normal, but we still need some boring people in charge again. We need our leaders to stand being in the same room, and not calling each other names like it’s a playground.
We asked for a boring president.
We got one.
Let’s shut up and enjoy it for a few minutes.
