We’ll all remember where we were when Joe Biden resigned his candidacy. I was watching Team Canada play Puerto Rico in pre-Olympic Basketball, and I happened look down at my twitter feed to find the post from Biden’s personal account making the announcement.
It was the best he could have done for the US. Trump is taking the “speak louder than your opponent” approach to new levels. Plus the attempted assassination adds a different complexion to it, because he can spin a new mythology for himself, to replace the convicted felon image. The Supreme Court ruling on Presidential immunity strengthened him, giving him more momentum, and voters a frightening look at the future which, made the Biden withdrawal necessary.
With it, came a sense of bone-deep weariness at yet another unprecedented, and historic moment after five years steady of them. Or might that have been 30? All of our great “world-changing” events feel as if they’ve happened since the 1990’s. Gulf War I in the early 90’s, Clinton and Lewinsky. Y2K, which I grant was pretty much a bust. Then there was of course 9/11. It started a war in Afghanistan to root out Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. And a second war out-of-nowhere war in Iraq, which turned out to be started on a false pretense of weapons of mass destruction. And that only takes up to the early to mid aughts.
We’ve witnessed the legalization of gay marriage, the advent of social media, and cell phones turning into this mini hand-held computer we carry in our pocket. We saw the first black man become President of the United States. In Canada, for a brief moment in time we saw that a federal cabinet could look remarkably like the population it represents. We had it pretty good there for a while.
The last five years have been loaded with ‘unprecedented historical’ moments. Donald Trump gave us a taste of what a world might be without America, while in Ontario a guy named Doug Ford proved you could win a party leadership, and a general election within six months (no one had ever tried before). There’s been a two-year long pandemic, for all the restriction and we’re probably not 100 per cent done with it either. Its economic fallout has brought both an affordability crisis, and a wave of discontent, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades.
Let’s bring this trip through history back to Biden's resignation, It mirrors that of that the 1968 election when the Democratic nominee resigned after a poor showing in the primaries, and they ended up with Richard Nixon as President. I suspect Biden has a few more ‘ unprecedented and historic moments’, with a speech, and his final days in office.
Here’s hoping precedented, and ordinary moments soon.