Old Man In a Hurry

In a speech on June 19, 1886, the then 37-year-old Lord Randolph Churchill (father of Winston) addressed the ambition and “racist hate-speech” of his opponent with a warning to his audience to “be aware of gratifying the ambition of an old man in a hurry.”

Since January 6, 2021, violent attack on Congress, even many diehard Trump fans were heartened by the man’s pending departure as they anticipated president-elect Joe Biden would usher in a period of peace and civility to our country. 

The many Americans who voted for Biden did so in the hope that Biden’s mandate-less victory would translate into a sort of caretaker presidency and thereby allow the country to heal from its greatest period of divisiveness since the Civil War.

Instead, in the past eight months, we have been witness to: the hastily planned, and catastrophic withdraw from Afghanistan; our border problem devolving  into an immigration crisis; the slow train wreck of an economy as “transitory” inflation take us from 2.4% to somewhere above 5% inflation, with more to come given our ongoing supply chain and labor disruptions.

In contrast to Lyndon Johnson’s 61% win against Goldwater’s 38.5%, with the attendant 1964 Great Society mandate, Biden’s 51.3% over Trump’s 46.9%, along with the 50-50 Senate split, marked something far less than a mandate calling for structural societal changes. 

To this day America maintains a military presence in Germany, Japan and Korea. Biden’s decision to abandon the Bagram military base in Afghanistan, against the apparent advice of his military commanders, was a huge military, political, and tactical mistake. Assuming the worst of the pandemic’s economic impact is behind us, and with structural inflation on the rise, the idea of further flooding the economy with a $3.5 trillion “Human Infrastructure” bill is a foolhardy move.

In light of the above, and given Biden’s nearly 50 years in politics, any reflection on what’s going on in America must take heed of Randolph Churchill's cautionary advice and become aware of an old man in a hurry, with glory in his eyes, with history on his mind.

— Sina.