Will Wood: Better to be boring than sparking fire
I started writing this column on January 7th, 2021 because I felt that surely we had seen enough: A police officer being beaten with an American flag; a mob stirred into action by a defeated incumbent trying to cling to power through spurious lawsuits, election lies, and violence, and people parading through the Capitol of the United States carrying the flag of the Confederate States — even if one is oblivious to the racial connotations of that flag, it is the flag of people who betrayed our country.
While Ronald Regan’s proclamation — at his own inauguration — that “government is the problem” set us on a slow march towards a day like January 6th, it was not that long ago that violence at the seat of our government seemed like the kind of thing that happened in Boris Yeltsin’s Russia, not here.
Then it happened here, on Trump’s watch. As president, it was very much his problem, and like most of his problems, it was totally self-made.
As November approaches, I just can’t see how anyone would like to go back to the days when every single dawn brought newspaper, television, and internet news outlets set fire by some new, outrageous development. Have we forgotten how tiring and grating it was to have the airwaves cluttered with the buzzsaw-like noise of the agitated left clashing with the reflexively defensive right every single day?
From his second day in office, when he lied to the CIA about how much larger his inauguration crowd was than Obama’s (to be clear: Trump’s was considerably smaller), then the Muslim travel ban, then Trump had to fire Michael Flynn, then Trump divulged classified information to Russia’s Foreign Minister in the Oval Office. That was just the first few months.
It was just exhausting.
It cannot be suggested that the ends justified the means. Trump’s accomplishments were few and unpopular. Most notably: a tax cut that a rapidly diminishing minority supported as it became increasingly obvious that it mostly benefits the rich at the expense of a massive increase in the federal deficit. Second place goes to the installation of three Supreme Court Justices whose vision of America is one with fewer rights, as demonstrated by the use of their new majority to issue an incredibly unpopular decision revoking a long-standing American right.
Say what you will about President Biden, he has one quality that I love in a president: He’s boring.
What? He fell asleep at a climate summit? Who among has not attended a meeting so dull it made our eyelids droopy? What, he confused some words? I can’t tell you how many times I have called one of my kids by another one of my kids’ names (or even the dog’s name) or how many times I arrive in the basement or the kitchen or the garage only to realize that I forgot why I set out for that destination in the first place. If you think it’s because I’m old, you should see how regularly my teenagers forget what they are doing halfway through a task.
But more to the point, sometimes I go days without hearing a news story about Biden.
It’s bliss.
Meanwhile, inflation (which was a global problem) is coming back under control, wage inequality is decreasing, infrastructure bills have been passed, a gun safety bill that enjoyed 76% of American voters’ support was signed into law, and if you think Biden is cramming environmental regulations down your throat and driving up fuel prices, did you know that the US is producing more oil now than ever before? Even more than when Trump was president?
I am not going to tell you that it is all sunshine and roses. For example: the border remains a mess (although the GOP’s decision to vote against the measures they negotiated to address the border makes it clear that they are about as serious about the border as they were about the deficit, which is to say, not at all serious).
In spite of the imperfect job Biden is doing, he has made tremendous progress on issues the majority of Americans support, and without the daily grinding down of our souls. I’ll take four more years of the sleepy guy over four more years of a president actively trying to divide us.
Will Wood is a small business owner, veteran, and half-decent runner. He lives, works, and writes in West Chester.
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