By PETER MAURICE
Readers who have no taste for fantasy may get no further than my title. Coupling of “greatness” and “Biden” will seem flippant — perhaps even giddy, after his garish “soul of the nation” speech at Independence Hall. I beg indulgence for a few paragraphs wherein I hope to justify this strange linkage, this improbable possibility.
As our election season once again reminds us, mediocrities are capable of vaulting ambitions. In American politics they often realize them while remaining, aside from the push of the self-marketer, creatures of middling qualities. Adulation and flattery feed an average Joe’s pretensions to greatness, while contempt and rejection have been known to bring about a more honest self-assessment.
Of late, every time Biden is allowed to speak, or even read a teleprompter in public, embarrassment and contempt hang in the air. And it isn’t only the opposition gauging the depth of the president’s decrepitude. Although most Democrats still manage to suppress the ironic smile when Biden speaks of a second term, his party’s leaders and pundits have clearly split into two camps: defectors who’ve jumped ship, and supporters looking anxiously from the tilting deck.
Running for Senate in Ohio, Tim Ryan is also running from the president. As with other Democrat candidates in tight races, prior commitments — naming a park, dedicating a branch post office — made a proposed Biden visit to his state problematic for Ryan. During his debate with J.D. Vance, the aspiring senator left no doubt that he had abandoned the good ship Biden: “We need a new generation of leadership.”
Starting almost with his inauguration, signs of Biden’s pariah status have appeared with growing frequency and regularity. But it was Obama’s triumphal return to the White House in early April to celebrate the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act that signaled a quasi-official sanction to jilt the enfeebled president. (Even though he resides in a mansion less than two miles from the White House, this was Obama’s first call on his “best friend.”)
The contrast between the courted predecessor and the slighted incumbent couldn’t have been starker. A virtual fan club of cabinet secretaries, senators, and congresspersons crowded the visiting prince. Vice-president Harris beamed ecstatically as Nancy Pelosi raised his hand for a reverential kiss. President Biden, wearing a panicked smile, wandered among the celebrants, lost and unnoticed. Even while Biden tugged at his shoulder, Obama delayed acknowledging his pesky elder. None of Obama’s admirers could divert their rapt attention from Forty-four to afford Forty-six the honor of a handshake.
Watching this cruel humiliation, a friend confessed that the un-Christian contempt that he habitually feels for Biden dissolved in a twitch of sympathy. It’s not hard to understand why.
In that same cruel month of April, even our “allies” the Saudis made Biden the butt of contemptuous lampoonery. State-run “Studio 22” featured on its program of April 5 a jowly mimic — looking and sounding more like Henry Kissinger than Biden. Maybe all of us Westerners look the same from such a distant cultural remove. Anyway, the Biden mimic mumbles into the mic, confusing Spain with Africa. He refers to the vice-president as his “first lady.” He turns to her repeatedly to jog his memory. After forgetting the name of the man who stimulates his “moral outrage,” he turns to Kamala for the prompt: “Putin!” The skit ends with Biden, in a narcoleptic swoon, collapsing into the burly arms of Kamala, who drags him off stage. Sic transit gloria mundi, indeed.
This Saudi mockery only underlines what we’ve seen since the early days of Biden’s basement campaign. The leader of the free world is tottering on the brink of Shakespeare’s “seventh age” of man. But before that final descent into second childishness and mere oblivion, could there be a chance for transformation? Against all probability, couldn’t Biden become the devout — and repentant — Christian of his public self-presentation? While he still enjoys the occasional hour of lucidity, it might be open for him to do something unprecedented in modern democratic politics.
Yes, Biden can yet be “great,” although earning that designation will require ceasing to be the Biden we are all too familiar with — the deal-maker, the trimmer, the fictive autobiographer with heroic memories, the latest of which threatens to stumble us into Armageddon. Perhaps a friend, or a caring priest — a true curé of souls — will remind him of ultimate things, of the eternal futility of gaining the whole world
As the clamor of partisans and promoters recedes, even “the most powerful being on the planet” may attend the quieter voice of conscience. Historic precedent and the science of probability say this will never happen; but from the Christian perspective, all things are possible (Matt. 19:26).
It’s relatively easy for the obscure penitent to whisper his mea culpa in a darkened confessional. A notorious scandal-giver has a thornier path to redemption: public repudiation of the crimes that assured his worldly eminence. For most of the worldly great, this proves too heavy a lift — or unburdening. Accustomed as they are to validation from sycophants and place-seekers, humbling public repentance from the “great” is as startling as it is rare.
Yet history is not without strange tales of emperors walking barefoot in the snows to beg forgiveness; of kings submitting to public flogging to atone for the murder of a saint. Books and movies commemorate these dramatic confessions. But we needn’t go back to the Middle Ages to find examples. Closer to our own time is the public scandal of Christians who defended — in the name of Christianity — the “Peculiar Institution.”
John Newton, a lionized cleric in the Church of England (and composer of Amazing Grace), risked disgrace with a pamphlet acknowledging his captaincy of a slave ship. Lest his confession elude the attention of those who might injure his career, Newton sent copies to every MP in Parliament. His conscience had been so deformed, he said, as to have called himself a Christian, even while trading in human flesh.
The Rev. Moses Brown, a founder of Brown University, was the scion of a family whose commercial interests included slave transport in the infamous “middle passage.” It wasn’t until disease and suicide had killed off half of his human cargo that Brown “saw his slaves with my spiritual eyes.” He then publicly repented. It was “given me to see” his obligation “to give them liberty.”
We might wonder at Newton’s and Brown’s capacity to embrace both slavery and the gospel of brotherly love were it not for our own “devout” promoters of abortion, same-sex “marriage,” and the sexual mutilation of children. Which brings us back to President Biden.
What if Biden were to stop lying to himself and to the nation? What if he were to make a public confession similar to that of the nineteenth-century slave traders? If he were to make such a public confession, I think it would sound something like this:
“It was given me to see that I had sinned against the innocent. And the sacrifice that this requires of me is to publicly renounce my role in their destruction, and to do all in my power to let those innocent creatures see the light of day. I have mocked the holy bond of matrimony by pretending that two men could consummate a marriage with my absurdly named ‘Defense of Marriage Act.’ I have mocked God. Now, with a gift of unearned grace, He allows me to see, through the cloud darkening my failing mind, that I have sinned. May America pardon my betrayal of a sacred trust. May God forgive me for mocking him. I am heartily sorry.”
Hearing such a public confession, would not the hair rise on the back of our necks? Would not tears of gratitude pour from our eyes? Would we not sing the praises of such a penitent?
Let us pray for our president. He need not end his days as a careerist, a politician, a sad footnote in the history of our decline and fall. The path to greatness lies open to President Biden. Let us all pray that he takes it.
(Peter Maurice’s articles have appeared in Gilbert, Crisis, the Latin Mass Magazine, and others.)
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