‘I’m Running Again!’–The Sorry Dotage Of A President Who Doesn't Know What's What

“I’m going to run again”, the President said, turning to his wife. "The country needs me.”

Jill turned over, gave her husband an affectionate kiss on the cheek. ‘We’ll talk about it in the morning’.

The First Lady knew the decision was coming and dreaded it.  Poor Joe would have to enduring two hard years of insults, questions about his mind, and cruel asides about his increasingly wobbliness. She couldn’t always be there at his side, the teleprompter script was only so big, and his handlers only so loyal.  

She knew that there was dissension in the ranks – aides who wanted him to move aside and make room for a younger man or that uppity Haitian woman who banged on about gay this, transgender that and for all her sparkly credentials was out to upset the applecart and push for, well, someone of her ilk like that Buttigieg who couldn’t tell a Constellation from a Stratocruiser; but you can’t tell me he didn't want someone from his gay cabal to come out front and center and depose the President, or that claque of black….

Here Jill stopped her reverie. Can’t be too careful with AOC and her gang of color snapping at Joe’s heels, easy to brand him soft on diversity if he started to complain about this whining ankle-biter who had never done a lick of real work in her life and could only manage a howl about race and gender.  

I better keep my own counsel, Jill said to herself, but it was time to come out of her own closet, not a gay one, God forbid, but a conservative one.  She had always been for the black man, and felt sorry for those gay men in San Francisco who had given each other so much suffering, and felt quite at ease, empathetic towards the Salvadoran immigrants who wanted a better life.  Have you ever seen those awful slums in San Gabriel? Ten children under a leaky roof and a drunkard for a husband bringing back God knows what disease caught from hookers in the capital?

Thanks to AOC and that shameless chicken-neck ambulance-chaser Al Sharpton, Joe had gone overboard on the race thing and way, way overboard on the gender thing.  Who would have thought that in this day and age female impersonators were teaching kindergartners about sex.  A disgrace, a shameful, horrible disgrace and her husband was hauling them up on stage and showing them off to the electorate.  Joe never did know what was what, and now he was in the thick of gender wars that he could hardly understand.  Who was that gay boy in Wilmington that liked Joe so much? Sent packing, he was, a taint on Joe’s legislative agenda.

“Don’t you think it might be time for a younger man?”, Jill said to her husband over breakfast.

“Trump is a old man, too”, said the President, but he couldn’t shake the image of Trump squiring the gorgeous Miss Connecticut or his trophy wife.  Not too different from Gisele, Tom Brady’s former wife, lovely woman, not my type, but she must be wonderful draping herself over all those tanned muscles of his own gorgeousness. 

“Why couldn’t I have had that?”, the President said to himself.  Who really cares about Delaware? Or the bloody Mexicans?

Just as his mind was closing in on Melanie Trump and Gisele Bundchen, Jill put her arms around him and reassured him.  ‘Don’t go comparing yourself to Donald Trump’, she insisted, although in her heart of hearts she wished that her husband had some of that man’s… maleness. She would have liked being squired by a rich, powerful, attractive man on all those yachts and in those Florida resorts.  

A quick trip to Bimini, he might have said to her, and then St. Bart’s; but no, there was smiling Joe, Obama’s yes man, his lapdog if she were being brutally honest, always watching his P’s and Q’s, hoping for a chance to sit where Obama was sitting, waiting patiently, endlessly while Donald Trump made millions, had his own TV show, had been named sexiest man in America by New York magazine when he was a bigshot in New York.

Jill refused to watch the reels and clips of her husband tripping over his lines, walking like a marionette, all goofy smile. A wife must always love and stand by her husband and God knows I have put in my time, punching the clock in bloody Delaware while Trump gadded about with arm candy, had a real following, not just Joe’s sensible shoed ladies. And being a First Lady? Nothing at all, invisible woman with a retinue.  Better back to Delaware than in this closet, kept out of the way or bustled to ladies’ teas.

“Maybe you should rethink it a little, darling”, she said.

“Rethink what?”, replied the President, still in the arms of Melania and not quite sure where he was supposed to be; but luckily his personal valet tapped on the bedroom door, announced bed tea, and opened the armoire to look for that dark blue suit which would look so good on television.  And then came his handlers, one by one, briefing him for this meeting and that, so whatever Jill had been saying was lost in a whisper.  “Oh, well, probably something about the dog”, although it was Obama who had that cute poodley thing, and the Kennedy kids were always pictured with their dog.

In one meeting after another, the President turned over the proceedings to one of his aides.  He was quite happy with his emeritus role and to let his advisors sort out the tangles of interest rates, Ukraine, fracking, the border, and Putin.  A President was there to mean something, not necessarily to wonk out policy.  

Although he never told anyone, Ronald Reagan was his hero – a man of principle, rectitude, good humor, and a happy goodness that people loved.  He never did anything, Joe reminded himself.  He simply was; but Joe Biden was no Ronald Reagan.  He had none of his gentle humor, lambent personality, or genuine belief in America.  Biden had trouble making sense of the fractious, angry country over which he presided.  What had happened in his eighty years of life to make the country so unknowable and, well, so unlikeable?

So President Biden made his announcement to his staff, the media, and the American public.  He would indeed run again for office.  He had sinking feeling when he thought about facing the fast-talking, slick, carny barker Trump in debate.  There would be no teleprompter, no mini-mike in his ear, no one to guide him through the thicket; but his smile had always won the day, and his aides were good at patching things up, spinning his words in the right way, and working the press.  Thank God the media are all for me in the first place, the President thought, having been thrown softballs by MSNBC, CNN, and the New York Times for years. 

Jill was not a happy person that day, for she knew what was coming.  A barrage of insults, innuendoes, and harsh remarks inconsiderate of the man’s age and condition; and an endless round of campaign stops, speeches, and dinners.  Even with a few pep pills and good fortune the poor man was simply not up to it; and God forbid, what if he won?  That bitch Harris would certainly take over before long, and what a kettle of fish that would be.  But she had always been there for her husband, and now was not the time to step out of line.  ‘Good luck, dear’, she said as Joe headed off for the Oval Office.