The Tao of Joe

Moderates. It's easy to overlook them, to miss the passion and the genius because of the label. But as we all impatiently await a Biden rescue on the burning deck of the Trump administration, anxious and crazed in one way or another, it would behoove us to understand the psychological underpinnings of our president-elect. Fortunately, we have a lot of data to go on. Joe Biden's biographer Evan Osnos put it this way: Joe Biden's passion for fairness is the through-line guiding his career over the last 50 years. And it is precisely his lack of dogmatism-- his moderation-- that has given him the flexibility to navigate the treacherous waters of Washington and advance, in an imperfect but consensus-oriented way, countless fair and just movements over the course of his career. 

Though Biden has doggedly pursued fairness over the course of his life, his biography also showcases how unfair life can be, in the midst of good luck: His fortuitous election to the Senate at the age of 29, followed weeks later by the unbelievable tragedy of losing his wife and infant daughter in a car accident. His ill-fated presidential candidacy in 1988, redeemed 20 years later by his selection to be the vice-president to the most transformative president in a generation. The tragic loss of his son Beau in 2015, when everything else in his life had been building to a comfortable retirement. And of course, his faltering candidacy in early 2020, turned around in dramatic fashion in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday. 

But the juxtaposition that trumps all the others has been the pandemic whose horror helped catapult Biden to the presidency. COVID-19 and the other crises of 2020 revealed to millions of Americans our deep need for a president who can provide stability, competence, decency, unity, and empathy. How fortunate that Joe Biden has each of these qualities, all core competencies as a result of the vicissitudes of life he has weathered. Joe Biden, scars and all, is a man perfectly fitted for the hour. 

The qualities of wise and unwise leaders are two of the chief themes running through a (well-timed) book I've been meditating on the last few months, the Tao Te Ching. Leaders are either in accord with or in opposition to the Tao, the basic principle of the universe. There's so much wisdom I'd like to share from this book (and I'm sure I will be in other posts), but Chapter 59 especially jumps off the page as the epitome of Joe Biden:

For governing a country well

There is nothing better than moderation.

The mark of a moderate man 

is freedom from his own ideas. 

Tolerant like the sky,

all pervading like sunlight,

firm like a mountain,

supple like a tree in the wind,

he has no destination in view

and makes use of anything

life happens to bring his way.

Nothing is impossible for him.

Because he has let go, 

he can care for the people's welfare

as a mother cares for her child.

I hope those words will prove more true than we can imagine-- that Biden will transform the impossible into the accomplished. The stakes are high, the obstacles many, and I often doubt how much can be achieved. But if anyone can slice through the fetters of dogmatism and arrive at something like justice in our time, it's Joe. And on the other side, I have a vision of what it might be like-- perfectly encapsulated by the last few lines of Chapter 17 of the Tao Te Ching. Here's the chapter in its entirety:

When the Master governs, the people

are hardly aware that he exists. 

Next best is a leader who is loved.

Next, one who is feared.

The worst is one who is despised.

If you don’t trust the people,

you make them untrustworthy.

The Master doesn’t talk, he acts. 

When his work is done, 

the people say “Amazing:

we did it, all by ourselves!”