Thursday, March 28, 2024

FROM THE RIDGE: Congrats, Mr President-elect

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From the Ridge (FTR): President-elect Joe Biden, congratulations on your election win. Joe Biden (JB): Well, thank you. It was part of a very big team effort, but we are incredibly pleased. It’s great to be talking to you down in New Zealand. I had a great visit there back in 2016 while vice-president and had a good conversation with your Prime Minister just last week. I look forward to a refreshed relationship with your nation.
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FTR: I see you are having some trouble with Donald Trump acknowledging his election defeat. His administration is only now just starting to allow you the odd briefing and he isn’t showing much enthusiasm for leaving the White House.

JB: I think our Secret Service is quite capable of removing trespassers, but I don’t expect it will get to that.

FTR: Happy Birthday as well. I see you turned 78 last week. Let’s talk a little about this. When Trump took office four years ago, he took the title of the oldest president at the time of his inauguration as he was 70. He took that title off Ronald Regan who was 69. Mind you, Regan was a few days shy of 78 when he left office.

But you must go back to 1841 to William Harrison for the fourth oldest at 68. He tragically died a month later, so didn’t get long to experience that high office.

Is your age and mental agility your biggest challenge?

JB: I don’t accept that. Age is just a number and I’m up for the massive challenges facing our country. I’m in the process of building a great team to support me. And of course, if the worst were to happen, Kamala Harris is an extremely capable woman. As they say, the VP is but a heartbeat away from being president.

FTR: Well, we saw you jogging across a stage to show how fit you were and Trump leaving his sick bed to campaign. You do know that Harrison mentioned above, delivered his lengthy inaugural address without a coat or hat to demonstrate his vigour, caught a cold and was dead within 30 days. You guys need to be careful.

Obama, Clinton, Kennedy and Teddy Roosevelt were all in their early to mid-forties, as an example of the other end of the presidential age range. However, I guess you could argue that didn’t all go well for some of them either.

Given how close some of those swing state victories were for you, one can’t help but think that if Trump had made a half decent attempt at controlling the pandemic, he might still be president.

JB: You make a good point but sadly for this country, he didn’t and my team and myself have a big task ahead of sorting this crisis out. We’ve already lost 260,000 American lives to this virus. The experts are saying it could be nearly 400,000 by early next year. By comparison we lost 47,000 lives in Vietnam in combat, 53,000 in WW1 and 292,000 in WW2, so it will be somewhere near the total of these three national tragedies.

FTR: If that were your only challenge, it would be daunting enough. How are you going to draw your country together? Your victory speech was great, and you talked about doing just this but easier said than done.

JB: We must rebuild bridges here. Between the different political parties, across the disparate regions that have completely different world views, between the races and all manner of other differing groupings. But yes, you are right, it will be a massive task.

FTR: Well, it feels like the US is in the process of rejoining the League of Nations rather than the individual isolationist approach of recent years. Given how intertwined most of us are with your economy and culture, it’s good to have you back. Good luck!

JB: Thank you.

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