Coronavirus brings out the best in Biden, the worst in Trump, and makes Bernie look more wacky than usual
by Tiana Lowe
| March 12, 2020 03:48 PM
At his best, Joe Biden is the back-slapping best friend of Democrats and Republicans alike, an affable and charming elder statesman with widespread appeal and half a century of experience. At his worst, he's a gaffe-prone empty suit, a mere vessel for whatever his team has programmed him to attempt to do for the day.
But as it turns out, even Biden at his worst beats his competitors in a time of pandemic. The global coronavirus explosion has brought the most feared excesses out of President Trump, who descended from a calm and competent peak of this year's foreign policy victories and economic gains into a frantically tweeting mess of a man.
Coronavirus hasn't goaded anything unusually distasteful out of Bernie Sanders. But a septuagenarian socialist ranting that we need Cuban literacy programs because climate change is going to kill us in eight years feels a little more facile than usual amid a crisis that really could kill millions in a quarter of that time.
And then there's Uncle Joe. In a vacuum, his Thursday speech addressing coronavirus wouldn't have been anything of note. His delivery surely isn't as sharp as it once was, and his eyes hardly left the teleprompter. But he conveyed accurate facts and the sense of honest urgency that the public craves in a time of crisis. So what if Biden's not a public health expert? His plan hit the crucial thesis that Trump hasn't been able to stop lying about: we have a fatal dearth of testing.
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