Our next president, Joe Biden, “will restore a lot of norms,” Barack Obama promised in November. And norms are exactly what America wants. After the young genius Bill Clinton, the blue-blooded heir to power George W. Bush, the visionary hope-and-change trader Barack Obama and the disruptor Donald Trump, Joe Biden promises to be America’s first norms president – a man whose pitch is: ‘I’m average. ”
On Wednesday, Joe Biden steps into the barroom in America as the crumpled fat man on the 80s sitcom and everyone in attendance exclaims, “Norm (ie)!” After the convulsions of World War I and a very abnormal presidency by Woodrow Wilson, the next president, Warren G. Harding, promised a return to normalcy. Biden takes over because he represents ‘Normalcy 2: The Re-Normening’.
What people in Washington want is to loosen the grip on our consciousness so that we can spend our days talking about normal, non-Washington things, like what should happen in the “Sex and the City” recharge that Kardashian Kanye West will get married. next, and whether Armie Hammer is a cannibal. If all goes well, instead of letting doom scroll on our phones late, we’ll normally scratch: Hey, did you hear Joe Biden bring two dogs to the White House? This is normal! Americans will have so little reason to stay up late to look at our phones that there will be a sex thrust: a bone tree, a tsunami, a national party like the end of ‘Return of the Jedi’, other than this times with naughty teddy bears. Late in 2021, about 40 million babies will be born and they will all be named Norm. Even the girls.
Accompanying this new wave of normalcy is a consequence: Biden cannot be Mister Norm if he does a lot of good that makes people angry. Transferring policies to the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezites would not be normal. Biden’s half-hearted plans for a Green New Deal, an abundance of social justice programs and the opening of borders to anyone claiming to be a refugee would not be normal. They are divided, they make people quarrel and shout; they will drive Americans back to the biased news channels and toxic social media sites.
Some old Washington hands speculated that Biden would have been absolutely fine with a Senate controlled by Mitch McConnell – neither of them advertises it, but the two of them have been friends forever – because that would have given him a perfect excuse has around a ceremonial president, the kind of man who calls a lid at 9am and retires to his basement to talk about the good ol ‘days and watch reruns of’ The Andy Griffith Show ‘.
As it is, with the Democrats of Georgia pulling the double upset, and Dems giving the narrowest possible majority in the Senate to go with an almost equally anorexic majority in the House, the Donkey Party haunts that ‘We have control of the government unites for the first time in a decade. “Only technically. No one has ever done much with 50 senators. A Senate of 50-50 is a sign that the country is evenly divided. If the Senate is ordered not to go either way, it comes down to the words: Shut up.
Bid yourself said, the day after the election, “The presidency itself is not a partisan institution. It is the office in this country that represents everyone, and it requires a duty of care for all Americans. This is exactly what I will do. ”
Biden may be the most popular president since George W. Bush after 9/11 if he thinks he represents everyone, not just the small percentage who make up the Democratic Party’s activist wing. And what does “everyone” want? Nothing but an end to the age of COVID. With our first norm president, maybe we can all just start working as usual again.
Kyle Smith is a critic at National Review.