Patience Overstays Its Welcome
Terry H. Schwadron
July 19, 2024
How about we offer a toast to Patience rather than this constant urge to give in to the demands of immediacy?
Democrats are going wild waiting for Joe Biden to make up his mind, or to re-make his mindset, over whether to stay in the presidential race amid a seemingly endless test of his ability to come across as a “performer” reflecting understanding, candor, quick wit and wisdom.
Of course, 81-year-old Biden thinks he has made up his mind, that he is the best candidate even now, after a disastrous televised debate and multiple subsequent television interviews that each have included verbal missteps or actual, over-careful physical steps as he carries on a full White House schedule and agenda that anyone would find trying.
But enough party thinkers keep showing up with adverse poll information in hand to leave the door open just a bit, enough so that cable television continues its breathless heartbeat watch over Biden’s candidacy. Each new drip-drop of questions seem to simply weaken Biden’s position and his chances in the election altogether — and afford Donald Trump more uninterrupted time to suggest that he now is the national unifier without sufficient public pushback,
None of this has to do with governing. It has to do with winning a contested election in a country that douses itself daily in imagery of youthfulness and performance as a perception of strength or weakness, of “toughness,” as if that is the measure of how we should be leading our country. What happened to wisdom, the ability to recognize reali or even the need to identify the right problem to solve?
Patience in an Impatient World
Enter Patience, which the old saw suggests is a virtue, celebrated in scriptures and texts, for promoting the notion that good things somehow result from holding back. But patient waiting is not passive idleness, it is an active challenge to gather more precise information to bring to decision-making. Patience requires a courageous belief that the most positive outcome still hangs in the balance.
In this case, we understand that Biden is the sole decision-maker, but he is inviting information that would dissuade him from continuing, and then insisting that there is none. Polls may be imperfect, but they are not pointing to a Biden majority, particularly when the outcome of the election depends on Electoral College counts by full states. Indeed, they point to trouble in down-ballot elections as well as for the White House.
Those who want a Democrat — any Democrat — instead of Trump have seen a series of very un-positive developments in recent weeks as Trump has survived an assassination attempt, slipped by several criminal charges and been feted endlessly by his adoring, if staged masses.
The Democratic restless are calling for their Patience to say goodbye with a sense of urgency. If Biden is going to pull out, he ought to do so straightaway, pulling the bandage off all at once, since the time and job of reorganizing a Biden-less campaign will be complicated all by itself.
It’s almost as if we did not understand a year ago or more that we might not like finding ourselves with a choice between these two aging, egotistical and less-than-perfect men.
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