Instead it was sober, gracious, measured, and honest. He spoke in his "indoor voice" -- quiet, but firm and wise. It was more like an FDR "fireside chat" than a speech. We need to hear much more of this and circumstances may require this now that "social distancing" will make large crowds unsafe for the foreseeable future. Joe is much better in this mode than in the angry old codger trying to fight off fire from ten directions that we saw in most of the debates. Then he seemed an out of touch old man. But last night, he seemed wise and compassionate.
I've watched that speech again to try to understand why it was so effective.
The analogy I come up with is this: There is large part of this nation that feels abused, lied to, insulted, exploited, psychologically manipulated, and very, very afraid for the future if this is all allowed to continue.
Biden now suddenly appears as the veteran cop, the grizzled old Irishman, close to retirement with a backstory of personal tragedy and obvious flaws, some baggage, but basically decent. This is his moment to be a hero. Not the one he imagined, guns blazing away in an epic shootout with terrorists.
No, he suddenly realizes that he becomes a hero right now by being that figure, the one that we, the abused spouse, looks to with a kind of last glimmer of hope. He says, "I can see what he's put you through and I believe what you tell me. We are going to get a restraining order on him, but you've got to trust me and work with me. We can get him out of your life and make it impossible to do this to others, but I need you to trust me and work with me."
Others showed up before him and they were all good people. We may have liked the young, attractive, brilliant cops like Cory and Pete. We may have agreed with retired professor who had so many interesting plans for fixing all our problems. We may have been interested in the efforts of the aging revolutionary to rethink our entire social and economic life and to use this crisis as a way to completely re imagine the future.
But right now, we just want the restraining order.
There is a part of us that will be eager to return to those other ideas and debates, but right now all we can focus on is getting HIM out of our lives and as far from our kids as possible.
Biden is offering to turn off the gaslight, to get that restraining order to stick, and help us get our lives back together. He's an old man with obvious flaws and blindspots, he is close to retirement and we know he won't be there for long, but right now he seems to be all that stands between us and utter catastrophe.