{"id":89075,"date":"2020-11-07T22:25:10","date_gmt":"2020-11-08T05:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=89075"},"modified":"2020-11-08T16:26:39","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T23:26:39","slug":"president-bidens-success-will-be-our-countrys-success-we-should-all-root-hard-for-him-and-pray-for-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/11\/president-bidens-success-will-be-our-countrys-success-we-should-all-root-hard-for-him-and-pray-for-him.html","title":{"rendered":"President Biden’s success will be our country’s success. We should all root hard for him, and pray for him."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Bush — This is the handwritten note that President George W. Bush left in the Oval Office for President Bill Clinton on 20 January 1993, the day on which Mr. Clinton, who had defeated him in the November 1992 national election, assumed the presidency and moved into the White House.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I share with you here the concession speech<\/a> that Mitt Romney offered following his lamentable loss in the 2012 presidential election:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I also found this note, which I received yesterday (Friday) afternoon from my friend Tom Pittman, of considerable interest.\u00a0 I share it with his kind permission:<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #333399;\">Ready for two ironies?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #333399;\">(1)\u00a0 In electoral votes, the most likely scenario is President Trump will lose by the same number of electoral votes that he beat Hillary by in 2016.\u00a0 Trump refers to that as a \u201clandslide victory\u201d.\u00a0 (306 to 232).<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #333399;\">(2) In popular votes, President Trump will lose by about the amount Mitt Romney did in 2012.\u00a0 Trump refers to Romney as a \u201cchoke artist\u201d for losing by that much.\u00a0 (Both had about 47% of the popular vote.)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>[See\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/elections\/2020\/general-results\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/elections\/2020\/general-results<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As many of you are aware, I swore off political posting here several months ago.\u00a0 The partisan divide at the time was too impassioned, too heated, for me to believe that my spouting off here would have any impact or do any good.\u00a0 And (much more importantly) I had been told at second hand of a potentially significant donor to the Interpreter Foundation who had vowed that, because of my political views, he would not contribute to support our work \u2014 work that is, incidentally and for the record, wholly and completely nonpartisan and nonpolitical.\u00a0 Given the negligible influence that my political posts might possibly have had and the tangible harm that my political posts had already apparently done to the Interpreter Foundation, it seemed to me obvious that I should refrain from further posting on political matters.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But the election is now behind us.\u00a0 Any ambiguity that remains on <em>that<\/em> point \u2014 if any really\u00a0<em>does<\/em> \u2014 will be handled by the courts.\u00a0 I hope that the bitter partisanship will subside.\u00a0 So I\u2019m going to rescind my self-imposed ban on political posts.\u00a0 There will be several issues on which I\u2019ll want to comment from time to time \u2014 including the impending Biden\/Harris administration, certain Supreme Court cases, and the persisting question about which party will control the Senate \u2014 and I <em>intend<\/em> to comment.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like being muzzled.\u00a0 Even if I\u2019m the one doing the muzzling.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As should have been clear, I voted for neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Biden.\u00a0 I\u2019m not especially happy with the election of Mr. Biden and the elevation of the far-further-left Kamala Harris to the proverbial heartbeat\u2019s remove from the Oval Office.\u00a0 I\u2019m a free market conservative, after all.\u00a0 But I won\u2019t be unhappy to see Mr. Trump exit the White House.\u00a0 The dishonesty, the perpetual incivility, the always-transactional self-service, the crudity, the amorality, the incomprehension of constitutional and other norms, the hostility to science, the incoherence, the ceaseless self-generated crises and scandals, the ballooning national debt, the egocentrism, the gross politicization and disastrous mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, the musical chairs administrative style, the continuing demands for absolute personal loyalty, the personality cult . . .\u00a0 I won\u2019t miss these at all.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Given my deep distaste for Mr. Trump on multiple levels, the election may turn out as well as I could possibly, realistically, have hoped \u2014 with a decreased Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, a continuing Republican majority in the Senate, a barely-elected Biden\/Harris administration that lacks any real mandate for dramatic changes beyond not being Donald Trump, and (wonder of wonders!) a 6-3 conservative, originalist majority on the Supreme Court of the United States.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Have we elected an \u201cavowed Marxist\u201d to the American presidency, as some have described President-Elect Biden?\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 He\u2019s not a Marxist, and certainly not an \u201cavowed\u201d one.\u00a0 (Look the word <em>avowed<\/em> up.)\u00a0 He\u2019s further to the left than I would like.\u00a0 <em>Much<\/em> further.\u00a0 But he\u2019s within the mainstream.\u00a0 And I firmly believe that his instincts incline him to compromise and moderation.\u00a0 There are, however, left-wing elements in the Democratic Party \u2014 including Kamala Harris \u2014 that will try very hard to drag him further leftwards, so, for his own good and for that of the nation, I think it very important that he be forced to work with a Republican-controlled Senate.\u00a0 He might even prove to be inwardly grateful for an excuse not to enact the agenda of the radical Left, a scapegoat on which to blame his failure to defund the police and move us toward a socialist utopia.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Many years ago, not long after I had joined the faculty, Senator Joe Biden came to Brigham Young University and spoke to a relatively small audience that was crammed into the Varsity Theater in the Ernest L. Wilkinson Student Center.\u00a0 I went early and managed to join in the event.\u00a0 I was at once dazzled and terrified.\u00a0 He handled the crowd extraordinarily well, moving among them with the ease of the then popular audience-participation television talk-show host Phil Donahue.\u00a0 I thought back then that he was a political figure to be reckoned with.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s much older now, and, I think, nowhere near as agile mentally, verbally, or physically as he was then \u2014 although I noticed his jogging onto the stage tonight for his victory speech.\u00a0 Several major gaffes, not least among them some spectacular revelations of arrant plagiarism, delayed his rise to the presidency but ultimately failed to stop it.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>However, for those of you who fear, hate, or are inclined to demonize Joe Biden, please consider this:<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/11\/07\/mitt-romney-congratulates-biden-praises-his-admirable-character\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">\u201cMitt Romney congratulates Joe Biden, praises his \u2018good will and admirable character\u2019\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For those of you who might despise, hate, or be disposed to demonize Mitt Romney, please consider this:<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kLMYW8jFPHg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">\u201cLindsey Graham Chokes Up Talking About Joe Biden\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>By the same token, my friend Anne Palmieri (a disappointed Trump voter) has shared some calls from Biden partisans for retribution against Trump supporters.\u00a0 For instance, a <em>Washington Post<\/em> opinion writer is alleged to have declared that \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/trump-republican-party-2020-burn-down\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">We have to burn down the Republican Party.\u00a0 We have to level them.\u00a0 Because if there are any survivors they could do this again.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Others are calling for the compilation of \u201clists\u201d of those who backed Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One of the things that I\u2019ve hated \u2014 <em>hated<\/em> \u2014 over the past several years has been the vitriol and incivility of American politics.\u00a0 I blame Donald Trump for a great deal of this, but he didn\u2019t invent it \u2014 instead, he rode it to the presidency \u2014 and it\u2019s certainly not a monopoly of the political \u201cRight\u201d (where some, not I, place Trumpism).\u00a0 To me, the comments and the perspective that some curiously triumphant Leftists advocate are utterly contemptible. And they\u2019re a bit mystifying, as well:\u00a0 What makes these Bidenistas imagine, given the close election that we\u2019ve just gone through \u2014 with the Republicans gaining seats in the House and apparently retaining control of the Senate, and with Biden\/Harris barely eking out an Electoral College victory \u2014 that they now possess some sort of mandate, or the status or the power, to launch an ideological witch hunt or a political pogrom against those who voted differently?\u00a0 This is the kind of thing that must stop.\u00a0 It <em>must<\/em> stop, or it will destroy our country.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I hope that the unifying, conciliatory, and charitable sentiments expressed by President-Elect Biden this evening will triumph, not only in the pending Biden administration itself but among Americans generally.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 I share with you here the concession speech that Mitt Romney offered following his lamentable loss in the 2012 presidential election: \u00a0 \u00a0 I also found this note, which I received yesterday (Friday) afternoon from my friend Tom Pittman, of considerable interest.\u00a0 I share it with his kind permission: \u00a0 Ready for two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>President Biden's success will be our country's success. 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