It’s rare indeed that voters have such a stark choice between good and bad as we did in the 2020 presidential election.
A story in today’s Washington Post adds to that legend by bringing in a third president who would fall somewhere in between 2020’s two choices.
It was 50 years ago today that a 30-year-old senator-elect from Delaware lost his wife and baby daughter and had his two toddler-age sons injured in an automobile accident.
Senator-elect Joe Biden returned from Washington as soon as he got the news and went to the hospital where Beau, 3, and Hunter, 2, were recuperating. He spent every waking hour there for as long as his sons were hospitalized, and indeed, when he was sworn in for his first of six terms in the Senate on Jan. 5. 1973, it was in his sons’ hospital room.
Two weeks earlier, on the day after the accident, Biden got a phone call from the president of the United States.
Operator: Mr. President, Senator-Elect Biden for you.
Nixon: Yes.
Nixon: Hello?
Operator 2: Just one minute Mr. President.
Biden: Hello, Mr. President, how are you?
Nixon: Senator, I know this is a very tragic day for you, but I wanted you to know that all of us here at the White House were thinking about you, and praying for you and also for your two children, and —
Biden: I appreciate that very much.
Nixon: I understand you were on the Hill at the time, and your wife was just driving by herself.
Biden: Yes, that’s correct.
Nixon: In any event, looking at it as you must in terms of the future, because you have the great fortune of being young, I remember I was two years older than you when I went to the House. But the main point is you can remember that she was there when you won a great victory, and you enjoyed it together. And now, I’m sure that she’ll be watching you from now on. Good luck to you.
Biden: Thank you very much, Mr. President. I appreciate your call. I appreciate it.
For all I’ve said about Richard Nixon over the years, hearing about this phone call surprises me not at all. While he was certainly a fatally flawed man, I would not call him demonic or evil. I have no doubt any of the seven men who followed him into the White House would share the same humanity and make that phone call.
It isn’t about being exceptional, it’s just about being human.
I can only imagine one president who would lack the basic human decency to mae that call.
You know who he is.
There are quite a few rich guys — and politicians too — with sociopathic tendencies, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone who isn’t in prison who is more of a pure sociopath than Donald Trump.
I’m not sure he ever showed one moment of humanity during his four years in the White House. As much as Trump and other Republicans went after Biden’s second son Hunter and his business practices, he didn’t even seem to know Biden had had another son.
Joseph Robinette Biden III, better known as Beau, was his father’s pride and joy. He died of brain cancer at age 46, and indeed, when his father won the presidency in 2020, he said the person who should have been elected was Beau.
Several months earlier, Trump was making nasty remarks about “Biden’s son” during one of the debates. Biden responded by saying he didn’t want to hear anything about Beau.
Trump responded that he had never heard of a Beau, that Hunter was the only Biden son he knew of.
Forgive my crudity here, but when I heard Trump say that, I said three words.
“What an asshole.”
Dick Nixon would have known.
Hell, Dick Cheney would have known.
Flawed as they were, they were still human.
Trump isn’t.