“What moves (and what ennobles) politics, character or vision? Do we ask the leaders who try to govern it to be strong, tenacious, combative? Or do we ask them to look beyond personal vicissitudes, beyond their biographies, beyond their own resilience in the face of difficulties in which sooner or later they find themselves? All these questions obviously have to do with the television duel the other night between Biden and Trump, two elderly gentlemen who seem to face the challenge that opposes them in view of the White House almost only in terms of their strength, their charismaof their popularity – or what’s left of it. Both of them ending up adhering to that personalistic code that seems to want to reduce the political contest to an almost physical duel and to the personal prowess of the candidates.
The topic, of course, concerns above all Biden. That he showed all the hesitations, the bewilderments, the confusion that we could see the other night, putting his own party into great alarm and leading the whole world to wonder if at this point he is not really ‘unfit’, that is, unfit to govern the free world once it has been clarified that he no longer appears capable of governing even himself.
We will see in the next few hours which way the scales will tip.. If tenacity in completing the candidacy prevails in the White House inner circle, or if in the end the concern will arise of not giving Trump the advantage of being able to compete with an antagonist in full physical decline. That is, whether the party of ‘character’ or that of ‘vision’ will prevail.
In the meantime, those who work in the political sphere and those who are even just curious about it would do well to measure the significance of the passing years, of the changing world, of the new arguments and new figures that emerge on the horizon. Yes, because the instinct of all of us is to imagine that, deep down, the world is always the same. And therefore that power is almost eternal, and it is only a matter of holding on to it for as long as possible. While then History teaches us – sometimes in even merciless ways – that the destiny of political force is almost always to weaken.declining as the years pass and the scenarios change.
‘The sun of power is bright, but sets at noon in general contempt,’ Shakespeare warned, making an imaginary Thomas More say it as he was being executed in medieval England. As if to remind us that every political adventure, even the most glorious and meritorious, has a point of collapse beyond which it becomes inconvenient, and even undignified, to try to push oneself.
Yet, against this literary and political wisdom, there are an infinite number of stories that have ended under the sign of an all too stubborn choice. Because the leader never really knows when the wind changes. And if his familiarity with power becomes a comfortable habit, he is inevitably led to think that decline always belongs to a time still far away.
So, it is likely that Biden will try to resist. Counting that the half of voters who consider Trump a devil (with some good reason) will resign themselves to vote for his antagonist, even if he has aged badly. An unlikely calculation, according to the polls. Yet perhaps not entirely far-fetched.
AND’ It is also likely that Biden considers it his duty, inexorable and almost mandatory, to demonstrate all the tenacity and resilience of which his aptitude for the profession (let’s call it that) makes him capable. His family, his staff, it seems, are pushing him in this direction. But above all, his long, very long experience in the palace, lasting more than half a century, seems in turn to guide him as if by instinct towards yet another confirmation of himself. Thus depriving him of the possibility of making that gesture of renunciation which would be, this one, a proof of extraordinary political talent”. (by Marco Follini)
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