Biden reminds me of Weekend At Bernie’s, but he’s the Democrats’ best hope of a sequel

The aviator shades. His beloved Corvette stingray, the sports car favoured by the Apollo astronauts. The radiant smile. In his later years especially, there has been something of the space cowboy about Joe Biden. His campaign for the presidency in 2020 evoked the storyline of that 2000 Hollywood movie, starring Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones. In it, a group of geriatric former astronauts come out of retirement to embark on one last mission that NASA’s younger generation was deemed ill-equipped to undertake.

No space cowboy: President Joe Biden wants four more years in the White House.Credit: AP

Victory over Donald Trump in 2020 was mission accomplished. US democracy had survived its existential threat. Many then thought that the oldest president ever to take the oath of office would serve just one White House term before driving off into the sunset – perhaps, back then, Biden was among them. But this week, of course, he made it official: the country’s 80-year-old president is headed for the launchpad once again.

Now the film that comes to mind isn’t so much a remake of Space Cowboys but rather the 1989 black comedy Weekend At Bernie’s. The premise is that Bernie is actually dead, but that the other characters pretend he is still alive. It is a trope that the late senator John McCain frequently used about Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, whom he considered so vital for the strength of the US economy that “if he died, we’d prop him up and put sunglasses on him as they did in the movie Weekend at Bernie’s”.

That is almost where I am with Biden right now. Despite his advancing years, and despite the slightly slurred speech that was possible to detect in his announcement video, I still think he remains the best qualified Democrat to neutralise the threat to US democracy posed by Donald Trump.

The premise of Weekend At Bernie’s is that Bernie is actually dead, but that the other characters pretend he is still alive. Credit: Gladden Entertainment

I should confess at the outset that I like the guy. During the Obama years, when I covered Washington, it used to annoy me that young White House staffers would often ridicule a vice president whose role on Capitol Hill in shepherding through key legislation – such as the Affordable Care Act – was indispensable. Having observed him up close, I am always struck by his decency, kindness and empathy.

Perhaps my warm feelings towards him have been influenced by the fact that he once gifted me a viral moment, when he smilingly declared “I’m Irish” when I asked him for an interview with the BBC – two words that launched a stream of overwrought columns accusing him of a deep-seated hatred of everything British. Why, he even has my latest book, When America Stopped Being Great, on his shelf in the Oval Office.

Lest I give the impression of being a craven fanboy, I should also point out that I am all too aware of his weaknesses. I saw them for myself in the early days of the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, when his appearances in Iowa – where he came fourth – and New Hampshire – where he came fifth – were jaw-droppingly bad. Speeches became rambling soliloquies. Despite his campaign team’s best efforts to force him to use a teleprompter, he frequently veered off script.

Somewhat perversely, however, I came to regard his weakness as a strength. The then 70-something candidate could be cast as a wise old man and sage: a non-threatening figure of reassurance, and even transcendence, in the very places that the Democrats needed to win: the key “rust-belt” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, and the lace curtain suburbs of cities such as Philadelphia and Detroit, which often determine their outcome. That same calculus, in my view, remains true today.

I realise, of course, that Biden will not be able to repeat the stealth candidacy of the COVID-hit 2020 campaign, when lockdowns meant he could be closeted away in the sanctuary of his Delaware home. Still, the White House offers a kind of refuge, since he can cite the burdens of office as a legitimate excuse for limiting in-person campaigning.

Rematch? Joe Biden and Donald Trump may face off again in 2024 when Biden’s 84 and Trump is 78. Credit: AP

Besides, if Donald Trump does emerge as the Republican nominee, he will suck up most of the oxygen, which will play into Biden’s hands. In a Biden-Trump match-up, my sense is that the 2024 election would become a referendum on the former rather than the present incumbent of the White House. That, after all, is what happened in last November’s mid-term elections. They were more about Trump than Biden.

Biden’s advancing years will obviously count against him. So, too, an unpopular running mate – Kamala Harris – a target both of racism and sexism. But American politics nowadays is driven so much by negative partisanship: the hatred of the opposition rather than the appeal of your own side’s candidate. That will propel Joe Biden as he mounts this valedictory mission, and seeks to defy the gravity of age.

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