On Saturday afternoon, while Joe Biden was reaching the tormented end of his losing struggle with old age, I happened to be in Galway at Garry Hynes’s brilliantly bleak production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Aaron Monaghan speaks the opening line in a high-pitched monotone: “Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.” Later, Rory Nolan’s Hamm utters an anguished “What’s happening, what’s happening?” and Monaghan replies: “Something is taking its course.”
It was indeed. What was taking its course was not just the Beckettian political drama of Biden’s futile struggle against inevitability (”you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on”). It was time itself – time that ravages the body and dims the mind. Biden, and for too long his party, had been trying to make it stop, to subdue it by sheer force of will. He couldn’t go on, but in what he likes to think of as his Irish cussedness, he was going to go on, come hell or high Trumpism.
Even on Friday night, when Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain called him to relay messages of support from progressive Democrats and urge him to “stay in”, the president had replied (according to the New York Times), “That’s what I’m going to do.” Staying in, keeping going, is what Biden does. He endures through trials and tribulations, putting one foot in front of the other as he moves through this valley of tears.
He persevered through the death in a car crash of his wife and child, the loss of his son and political heir to cancer, the pain of his other son’s descent into a chaotic addiction. In his address at the funeral service for Biden’s beloved Beau, Barack Obama quoted Patrick Kavanagh: “And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.” The leaves of grief kept falling and Biden kept treading through them towards the closing of the day.
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The Democrats – including some of their most passionate advocates of justice and democracy – were effectively raising their fists and mouthing “Lose! Lose! Lose!”
But putting one foot in front of the other was ceasing to be a metaphor and becoming an all too visible distress signal. Heroic denial was giving way to excruciating embarrassment as the sad little jog meant to simulate youthful vigour became the shuffle of a man afraid of falling. Donald Trump, at his rallies, delighted his fans with knowing enactments of his rival’s gait and gaffes: “I do the imitation where Biden can’t find his way off the stage ... So I do the imitation – is this fun? – I say this guy can’t put two sentences together.”
It was fun for Trump and for all those who have made American democracy into a cruel and killing joke. For everyone else, it was agony. To watch a good man, a remarkably effective president, and a courageous battler against adversity reduced to such frailty was, at both the personal and the political levels, unbearable.
And all the more so because, in his savage mockery, Trump was revelling in the revelation of a truth that the Democrats were denying. Trump lied about and exaggerated Biden’s incapacity. But the Democrats lied about and minimised it.
It was not necessary to be physically close to Biden to witness his deterioration. In February, I wrote that “Biden’s age is a gaping vulnerability that the Democrats have pretended not to see”. This was no blinding insight – merely a statement of the bloody obvious. But the bloody obvious was unsayable for many of America’s most progressive politicians. Right up to last weekend’s endgame, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were still urging Biden to hang tough.
They did this because Biden really has been a progressive president – not least in becoming the first occupant of the Oval Office to create a serious American response to the climate crisis. But loyalty and gratitude clouded the approach of a terrible reality: Biden was going to lose to Trump and a criminal coup-monger was going to have control of the presidency, both houses of Congress and a Supreme Court that has effectively declared him a monarch with permission to override all the laws of the land.
Trump, in his extraordinary moment of present-minded performance just after he was shot, managed to raise his fist and mouth “Fight! Fight! Fight!” But the Democrats – including some of their most passionate advocates of justice and democracy – were effectively raising their fists and mouthing “Lose! Lose! Lose!” Their rallying call was honourable defeat with Poor Old Joe. In the face of catastrophe, this indulgence in the politics of heroic failure was culpably reckless.
Whatever his cognitive condition, Biden eventually had enough of his wits about him to realise that there is nothing heroic in failure on this historic scale. In the dreadful TV interview with George Stephanopoulos after his disastrous debate with Trump, Biden had said that even if he lost in November “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job (sic) as I know I can do, that’s what this is about”. This was the ultimate expression of moral egotism – it’s worth letting Trump back into power so long as I feel that I’ve done my best.
But Biden really has now done his best. After half a century of public service, he has performed the last great service of bowing to the inevitable and giving the Democrats a fighting chance to save the American republic.
They must grasp that chance firmly and fiercely. They dithered and denied for far too long, losing too much of their own credibility by trying to insist that what everyone could see was not real. But it is not too late to get it back.
Something is now no longer taking its course. The endgame of American democracy is no longer just playing out in front of our eyes. Those who still want to live in a republic are no longer stuck in the audience, watching the enactment of its death throes. The republic must go on and Biden has ensured that it can go on.