What a real President looks like
On Friday President Biden went to Minnesota. At the state capitol he paid his respects to Democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, who were lying in state there. They were murdered in their homes by a MAGA assassin. The murderer was undoubtedly stochastically inspired by Trump.
This is what a real President with actual compassion and dignity looks like. Joe Biden didn’t have to go, especially now, stricken as he is by prostate cancer, which has metastasised to his bones.
The President isn’t running for anything. There is no one he needs to impress, no political agenda he needs to satisfy, no voters he needs to persuade, no fanatical followers he needs to throw red meat to. He wasn’t there for any other reason except that he is a human being with real human emotions and real empathy for the victims and their families.
Like the President, the Hortmans were Roman Catholics, so the President was seen genuflecting behind the carpet barrier posts in front of the coffins. He spoke with, comforted and hugged members of the Hortman family and friends. He was a human being, he was real, he was a President.
Joe Biden was and remains everything the American people expect of a President, and everything the American people should always have. To Joseph Robinette Biden, his elevation to the highest office in the world meant, for him, that he was the servant and not the master of the people who so elevated him.
Prior to paying his respects to the Hortmans, President Biden visited Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette at a Twin Cities hospital. Hoffman was shot nine times by the same MAGA lunatic who murdered the Hortmans. Yvette was shot eight times. Miraculously, they both survived. Biden was there to cheer and comfort them.
Again, this is what a real President looks like. These days it’s something easy to forget. America has been robbed of the privilege of having a human being in the Oval Office. Instead we have an insect, with insectile priorities.
Without fanfare or martial parade, without self-congratulations or cheap shots, without a retinue of billionaires and suck ups, Joe Biden came to the fallen, the dead, the grieving, and gave of himself, his grace, his comfort, his humanness. That was all. And it was enough.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.