King Lear gave up power too early. President Biden will give it up too late.
And that is Joe’s tragedy.
Unlike Biden, Lear had a loyal lord who was willing to tell him the truth. When the old king disinherits his good daughter and divides the kingdom between his maleficent daughters, the Earl of Kent tries to tell Lear he’s bollixing everything up:
“What wouldst thou do, old man? Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak, When power to flattery bows?” Lear, swayed by his bad daughters’ sycophancy, screams at Kent, “Out of my sight!”
Kent urges the king to “see better.”
Some eyes get plucked out in “Lear,” but the play is really a lesson about inner blindness, the way power can occlude the ability to see yourself, and the world. A lack of self-knowledge in a leader can lead to ruination.
And that is where we are with President Biden. His raison d’être for running, at 81, is stopping Donald Trump, a mendacious scofflaw who will become even more incorrigible with the egregious decisions of his radical Supreme Court and his own age spiral.
But Biden’s contention that he alone can beat Trump was never true. And now he has lost some moral high ground because he hid the evidence of cognitive deterioration.
Trump is the master con man, but Biden is giving him a run for his money.
He, his wife, his vice president and his longtime aides worked hard to conjure a mirage where everything is fine in Bidenworld.
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