Occam's Razor

And that’s basically it. One month from today, we’ll have an adult in charge of our country again.

For four years Trump has run the government as if Dennis the Menace were in charge. He was aided and abetted by the Republican Party, but make no mistake: The Republican Party itself didn’t want Donald Trump. They just discovered that they had no choice. Trump crashed their party so it was either adapt and be his fawning sycophant or do what only a relative handful of Republicans did: become Never Trumpers. Coincidentally they are also no longer Republicans, because the Republican Party is now basically the Trump Party.

It was crazy while it lasted, but in a month the party should be over. You know it’s still crazy because Trump sure appears to believe that somehow, he will still be president after noon on January 20. Too many Republicans in Congress are still afraid to state the obvious. I mean, the Electoral College voted last week so that’s that.

Well, not quite. It’s likely Trump believes that when the certification gets challenged in Congress on January 6 that somehow that verdict will get undone. Or there’s the less subtle route. Last Friday, Michael Flynn — his short-lived national security advisor who Trump pardoned — along with attorney Sidney Powell reportedly tried to talk Trump into a military coup. Just until the election could be rerun properly, mind you; “properly” meaning Trump is declared the winner, the only possible correct result.

It sounds like our next attorney general will have new charges (sedition) to file against Michael Flynn. Anyhow, for reasons I discussed in an earlier post, a coup is extremely unlikely, in part because it appears the military voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden. But also because the military swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, not the president. So did Trump, but Senate Republicans decided that it didn’t matter when your party is in charge.

Anyhow, one of the few things that made me feel better since the election was to watch our president elect behave, well, presidential. He’s busy doing the stuff that presidents traditionally do before they take office, albeit with fitful cooperation from the Trump Administration. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has finally acknowledged the obvious. Frankly, for all his words, I suspect McConnell is secretly relieved that Biden will be the next president. At his heart, McConnell is an institutionalist. Trump wanted to blow up the government. McConnell knows that is reckless; indeed, the surest way to get Republicans out of power is to blow it up. Institutions he cares about, like a conservative-leaning Supreme Court, can’t have much sway if government no longer exists. Also, he could be replaced with someone Trump would prefer more.

Biden’s picks so far have lived up to his promise to create an administration that reflected our diversity. It’s pretty breathtaking, really. Barack Obama’s administration was certainly reasonably diverse, but it was still mostly full of insider white guys. Frankly, had Bernie Sanders somehow won the presidency, I doubt his picks would be as diverse as Biden’s. They would definitely be more progressive, but I doubt we’d have an Interior secretary nominee who is Native American, a sign that Biden truly gets it. An insular figure like Trump would wreak havoc on his political opponents; Biden is wise enough to bring them along and put them to work, making them vested in the outcome.

Biden is smart enough to know he doesn’t know everything, and that he can only be effective through others. Trump never understood this at all; he values only subservience and loyalty. Only someone who has led a completely insular life where they never were accountable to anyone like Donald Trump can think they will always know more and be smarter than others. In his own way, Biden is creating another Team of Rivals, similar to what Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln did. The ramped-up diversity in Biden’s picks brings out more opinions and perspectives. The effective president spends most of their time listening, not giving orders. In short, Biden’s approach so far is very smart and bodes well for his administration.

Biden also understands that government and business are two completely different spheres and they really don’t mix. Trump’s term has pretty much proved this; he saw the presidency as primarily a way to satisfy his own ego while hopefully profiting from it as well. Government is in the business of serving the people, not the other way around.

Now if we can just get through this final month. Biden is not even president yet and already has a 55% approval rating. Trump never broke fifty percent and spent most of his time in the low forties. Citizens can smell competence, which Biden has aplenty. He may not be the president we want, but it sure looks like he’ll be the president we actually need for this moment.