I Miss Having a Human President

I can remember when we had a human president.

It was only a few months ago, but it may have been a lifetime.

Watching President Biden at the memorial service for Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were murdered in their homes by a Conservative Christian zealot, my heart broke open again at the sight of a leader of empathy performing the greatest act of leadership: being human.

I realized that amid the unthinkable criminality, staggering overreach, and human rights rollbacks we’re living through, perhaps the most tragic loss this nation has experienced, is that we have lost the reality of a president who, as Joe Biden has always done in challenging and painful moments: calls us to the best of who we are as a people, appeals to our better angels, and invites us to be agents of goodness.

It will be a long time until America can again look to its President for a compassionate response to other people’s pain; to see someone willing and capable of caring, weeping, and feeling.

We will have to wait years to have a leader whose burden is to the totality of our people; someone whose motivations are not profit and power, someone who does not take every opportunity, no matter how painful or sacred, to divide or wound.

Six months after leaving office, Joe Biden is doing the work our sitting President should be doing but cannot and will not do.

That’s the thing about President Biden: this is who he is at his core. He has always worn his heart on his sleeve. In a culture that increasingly conflates manhood with bloviating bluster and unrepentant cruelty, he has never allowed the pain in his personal life, his nation, or the world to harden him.

And he would have been there in that rotunda if the victims had been Republican politicians. He would have been there if they had opposed him during his presidency. He would have been there if they’d voted against his platform. He would have been there regardless of whether or not they aligned on issues. He would have been there if the victims had been from another party and the murderer from his.

No matter the circumstances or particulars, Joe Biden would have still found himself looking a devastated family in the eyes, holding their hands, and grieving alongside them, because, unlike his successor, he is emotionally mature and inherently decent. And while our current leader’s impulses sent him once again to the golf course, President Biden’s propelled him to a place of human suffering, attempting to relieve some of it.

There will be people reading this whose political tribalism and cultic toxic fervor will cause them to frantically attempt to dispute this, but even they know I’m right. There really isn’t any debating these matters, as the two men’s extensive bodies of work speak for themselves. They could not be more different, and the moral drop-off has been precipitous. As much as any destructive policies or predatory legislation, we are feeling the absence of empathy at the top, and it isn’t going to change for far too long.

It’s often said that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, and although Joe Biden is no longer our President, I’m grateful that he is still here, still showing this nation what decent leaders do, still confounding his hateful critics by not becoming them, still walking into a profoundly inhumane nation, and reminding us how to stay human.

Thank you, Mr. President