10-22-2020, 12:29 AM
At this point, Joe Biden seems sure to break the expectation that the Silent will be shut out of the Presidential succession. He seems, as does many other Silent men, to meld (as Howe and Strauss suggest) Civic-like (work ethic, rationality, working within the System, and being as Establishment as is possible, staying active intellectually and physically deep into elderhood) and Idealist-like (vision, principle, devout religiosity) traits. I see him as a sharp break from the current Skowronek cycle and as a strange bridge from the New Deal era (he got an early start in high-level politics) to what follows the neoliberal era. About as able an understudy of an above-average President likely to serve as a model for subsequent Presidents as is possible, he may bot have the two terms as President that one typically associates with above-average Presidents. Such will not be his fault. He will be past 80 when it is time for him to contemplate a bid for re-election.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.