Our next president, Joe Biden, “will restore a lot of standards,” Barack Obama vowed in November. And standards are exactly what America wants back. After boy genius Bill Clinton, blueblood heir to power George W. Bush, visionary merchant of hope and change Barack Obama and disruptor Donald Trump, Joe Biden promises to become the first US president – a man whose pitch is, “I’m average. “
On Wednesday, Joe Biden walks into the American bar as the crumpled fat man in the 80s sitcom and everyone in attendance shouts joyfully, “Norm (ie)!” After the convulsions of the World War I era and a highly abnormal Woodrow Wilson presidency, the next president, Warren G. Harding, famously promised a return to normalcy. Biden takes over because he represents “Normalcy 2: The Re-Normening”.
What people want from Washington is to loosen the grip on our consciousness so we can spend our days talking about normal, non-Washington stuff, like what should be happening in the ‘Sex and the City’ reboot, Kardashian said. Kanye West will get married next, and whether Armie Hammer is a cannibal. If all goes well, instead of staying up late with doom scrolls on our phones, we’ll be norm scrolls: Hey, did you hear Joe Biden taking two dogs to the White House? That is normal! Americans will have so little reason to stay up late and look at our phones that there will be a sexual surge: a bonk boom, a shag tsunami, a national nooky party like the ending of “Return of the Jedi,” except this time. with naughty teddy bears. About 40 million babies will be born by the end of 2021, and they will all be called Norm. Even the girls.
Accompanying this new wave of normalcy is a logical consequence: Biden can’t be Mr. Norm if he does a lot of things that make people angry. Handing over policy to the Ocasio-Cortezites of Alexandria would not be normal. Biden’s half-hearted plans for a Green New Deal, a plethora of social justice programs, and opening the borders to anyone who claims to be a refugee would not be normal. They divide, they make people argue and scream, they will drive Americans back to the partisan news outlets and the toxic social media sites.
Some old Washington hands have speculated that Biden would have done absolutely right with a senate controlled by Mitch McConnell – neither of them advertised this, but they’ve been friends since forever – because it would make him a perfect excuse. have given to a ceremonial president, the kind of guy who pulls up a lid at 9am and retreats to his basement to talk about the good old days and watch reruns of “The Andy Griffith Show.”
As it is now, as the Democrats in Georgia are provoking the double dismay, giving Dems the smallest possible majority in the Senate to go along with an almost equally anorexic majority in the House, the Donkey Party beams that “we have a joint control. talking about government for the first time in ten years. “Only technically. No one has ever rammed through anything with 50 senators. A senate of 50-50 is a sign that the country is evenly divided. If the Senate is ordered neither to go one way or the other, that comes down to it. to say: stay where you are.
Biden himself said, the day after the election: “The presidency itself is not a partisan institution. It is the only office in this country that represents everyone, and it requires a duty of care for all Americans. That’s exactly what I’m going to do. ”
Biden could be the most popular president since George W. Bush after 9/11 if he continues to think that he represents everyone, not just the small percentage who make up the activist wing of the Democratic Party. And what does “everyone” want? Nothing but an end to the era of COVID. With our first Normie president, we may all be able to get back to work.
Kyle Smith is a general critic at National Review.