Simple Decency

It's amazing what a difference a few weeks can make.

I no longer get up each morning dreading reports of what idiotic, inflammatory or dangerous things the president has done overnight. Now I wake up confident in the sanity and stability of our new president and his administration.

This morning I read that the first lady, Dr. Jill Biden, had placed large heart-shaped signs with encouraging messages on the White House lawn in honor of Valentine’s Day. Then she and her husband, the president, dressed in jeans and a leather bomber jacket and accompanied by their two German shepherd dogs (one of which is 14 years old) walked around chatting with the few reporters present. 

These are signs of normality for Americans -- walking with the dogs, enjoying a cup of coffee, and chatting with neighbors. These are things for which so many of us have yearned during the previous four years. There were no lies, no inflammatory statements, no bragging. Just ordinary people starting their Saturday morning the same way millions of other Americans start theirs. And the president handed his untouched cup of coffee to one of the reporters. People all across America are enjoying this touch of common human decency. What a relief and refreshing change it is after the past four years of vitriol and anger.

Gone are the days of incessant lies, name-calling, insults and threats. The Bidens have restored a sense of normality to the White House. The president has been busy addressing the pandemic, ordering 200 million doses of the vaccine and signing an executive order mandating the wearing of masks on all mass transit and on all federal property. 

Make no mistake: He was left an absolute disaster, by design. There was no plan for efficient distribution of the vaccine to the hundreds of millions of Americans desperate to get vaccinated. There was no money to help states organize and set up mass distribution centers. Biden was left some foreign policy messes, also by design, as well.

But I, and so many others, are loving this 'boring' presidency. We can breathe again. We can sleep. We can relax. We can revel in the simple human decency of this family. America isn’t perfect, of course, and there is still a great deal of work to do to address issues of poverty and racism, as well as the massive divide inflicted on our country by the previous president. 

But scenes like what we saw today on the White House lawn are a first, critical step.

So Joe and Jill, thank you for bringing our country back to the way it should be. Thank you for reminding us how normal, mentally healthy people live and act.