Is This All Americans Voted For?

Gerard Baker: “It’s hard to overstate the extent to which the Trump presidency was for nonpartisans simply wearying. It often felt like being a child of parents going through the collapse of a desperately unhappy marriage: Daddy rage-tweeting about some latest grievance while the media howl back in an angry storm of wild accusations and threats.”

“The Biden presidency by contrast is a throwback to an ideal of an earlier age of family tranquility: Old Joe sitting benignly in the La-Z-Boy, listening to Bing Crosby on the record player. Mother Media dutifully handing him his slippers and a scotch and reassuring him all is well. The kids quietly doing their homework, and everyone’s in bed by 9.”

“This contrast alone—the dialing down of the hysteria we’ve lived with for four years—probably explains the 10-point difference in the Trump and Biden ratings. The cleverest White House move has been the careful rationing of the president’s presence in the lives of ordinary Americans, the rediscovery that scarcity has value.”