The Tribune

At 78, with his wizened face and white mane grown long at the back, President Joe Biden somewhat resembles Sir Ian McKellen’s Gandalf from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Like the JRR Tolkien wizard, in countenance and character, Biden is the archetype of the wise man.

There is a conceit and immaturity of many millennials and post-millennials who often argue for change for the sake of change and that older leadership should, as a matter of course, step aside for younger blood.

While both change and youthful energy are necessary to rejuvenate politics and institutions, experience and wisdom are essential, especially during certain moments in history, such as when Britain summoned Winston Churchill during World War II.

This is one of those times in America, beset by: the worst pandemic in 100 years, the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, the existential threat of climate change and the vengeful virulence of white Christian nationalism and supremacy epitomised in and fuelled by Donald Trump.

At 39, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is now Biden’s Secretary of Transportation, is an extraordinarily articulate and highly intelligent and imaginative individual. He is a better orator and perhaps has greater raw intellectual capacity than Biden. But leadership is about more than style and presentation.

Given the vortex of crises and threats to America and the world, this moment calls for an individual like Joe Biden, whose life and political experience match the harrowing signs of the times. In the wisdom of Tolkien: “A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.”

Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a close friend of Biden’s told an interviewer: “Joe Biden has almost a superpower in his ability to comfort and listen and connect with people who have just suffered the greatest loss of their lives.” Such depth of empathy and non-judgmentalism come with longevity and life experience.

A story told in this column previously is that of a young man, with multiple degrees and well-read, who often told his students that despite these attributes, he was less learned and wise in experience and life than his 80-plus-year-old grandmother.

Biden is the characterological antithesis of the self-pitying, narcissistic, self-absorbed and pathologically non-empathetic Donald Trump, whose inability to turn pain into grace and empathy, has haunted him for a lifetime and has done excessive damage to himself and to America.

Wounded

In a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1987, Biden was dogged by rumours of plagiarizing material from a speech by then British Leader of the Opposition and Labour Leader Neil Kinnock.

He also faced allegations of exaggerating his academic record and plagiarism in law school. Biden withdrew from the race. Many thought his presidential dreams were ended. His integrity was wounded. It was a low moment in his public and personal life.

Biden said of that disastrous presidential bid: “When I stopped trying to explain to everybody and thought it through, the blame fell totally on me.”

His accepted personal responsibility and publicly apologized to his family, friends and supporters. He understood the ability to apologize was not a sign of weakness.

Contrition and a sense of legitimate shame are the necessary antecedents to healing and redemption, a fundamental truth that will likely never allow Donald Trump to overcome his demons.

But Joe Biden has not been defeated by failure and personal tragedy. As a boy struggling with stuttering, he never gave up trying to overcome his impediment. His character has been honed and toughened by a relentless spirit and humility that helps to overcome the deadly sin of pride.

He is not a cynic, though he enjoys a certain Christian romanticism born of his Irish roots and Roman Catholic faith.

His faith affords him the courage to keep trying, the courage of daily life, the courage to get out of bed and to put his foot on the ground to start a new day. The faith to unfurl from the fetal position into which we all retreat from the struggles of life.

And the faith that appreciates the philosophical light of Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard: “Faith sees best in the dark.”

Around one of his wrists, Biden wears his late son Beau’s rosary beads, which he has worn since his son died of brain cancer in 2015. “I have not taken off the rosary Beau was wearing when he passed, since then. It is my connection with him,” Biden said in a television interview.

Biden long ago realized that though one is not guaranteed victory in one’s efforts, that first the desire and then the unrelenting determination and fortitude to struggle is in itself a form of victory.

Only the second Roman Catholic President in US history, Biden often quotes Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy:

“History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme”

Fundamental

Biden’s Catholic faith, which was at a breaking point in one of the grief-stricken moments of his life, also expresses itself in his commitment to the defining principles of Catholic Social Teaching, which are fundamental to and animate his political worldview and policy ideas.

Writing on Anabaptist World, a Mennonite news website, John Gehring noted:

“While some on the left dismiss him [Biden] as a tepid moderate, his policy positions, influenced by and aligned with Catholic social teaching, are progressive, especially when it comes to the dignity of work, health care as a human right, economic fairness, defending the humanity of immigrants and responding to the threat of climate change.

“In contrast to Trump’s ‘America First’ nationalism, Biden understands that pursuing the global common good is not only a valued principle but a practical requirement in an interconnected world. …

“Biden’s rejection of right-wing libertarianism’s blind faith in markets and deregulation that only benefits the wealthiest few also finds expression in the communitarian values of his Catholicism.”

Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre. Writing in The Atlantic, he described how he came to view Biden as the best choice for the presidency at this moment in world and US history.

Wehner noted Biden’s wellspring of empathy:

“Empathy is the quality of putting yourself in the place of another, understanding how they are experiencing the world, identifying with their feelings, and being able to communicate that understanding to them. “ ‘Rarely can a response make something better,’ according to Brené Brown, a research professor at the University Of Houston Graduate College Of Social Work. ‘What makes something better is connection.’ And empathy is all about connection, about allowing others to feel heard and accepted. …

“‘One key to life is tying periods of suffering to a narrative of redemption,’ a friend once told me. Biden, facing nearly unbearable losses, used them to find greater meaning in his life, to find a narrative of redemption.”

Wehner writes: “Through that journey of grief, Biden not only found purpose; he also forged within himself greater empathy and compassion. He is a man acquainted with the night; his own wounds made him better able to identify with the affliction and agony caused by the wounds of others.

“Those are beautiful qualities to be found in an individual; they can also be important, even essential, qualities in presidents. At moments in the life of a nation, the president is called upon to give expression—in his words and through the grace and dignity with which he carries himself—to the sensibilities and emotions of a nation. They may be grief; they may be fear; they may be joy.

“But a president’s job is not just to express a kaleidoscope of people’s passions and feelings; it’s to properly channel them, to refine and elevate them, and to put them within a proper context. A president should connect with who we are, but also make us better than who we are. We need leaders who embody, even if imperfectly, our better angels.”

In August, 2017, the now infamous Unite the Right rally of white supremacists was held in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Rally included: neo-Nazis, right-wing militias, the alt-right, neo-Confederates and other agents of hate and division.

The events of those days were reportedly pivotal in Biden summoning his courage and his resolve in his mid-70s to lend himself in what he deemed: “a battle for the soul” of America.

It was another example of the lifelong conversion of Joseph Biden who, in the final season of his life, represents the better angels of America.

This white, older man of faith, and privilege, recognizes that his soul, his conscience and his redemption are intimately bound with him pouring his remaining lifeblood into the struggle for social, racial and economic justice and helping to save God’s creation.

In the words of Leonard Cohen’s song, Come Healing, Biden is gathering up the brokenness of his own journey and the journey of America, as he in his own way attempts to be a “repairer of the breach”.