JOE BIDEN AND THE VANISHED POLITICAL AGE:

This is what makes Joe Biden, supposedly the Democrats’ vanilla option, so interesting. More than any presidential nominee since John McCain, he hearkens back to that more decorous era. Biden entered the Senate in 1973. For historians of congressional clubbiness, that was after Sen. Everett Dirksen was keeping a clock in his office on which every number was a five, but before Sens. Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd were cruising around town like two rakes in a buddy comedy. This was the age of New England Irish eminences like Dodd and Kennedy, of Southern good ol’ boy segregationists like James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia. And those were just the Democrats.

That whips had to keep in line such different personalities shows how tricky legislating could be. The political parties weren’t yet organized into coastal elites and deplorables, but they also weren’t still divided along Reconstruction lines of North and South. Within each coexisted a hodgepodge of opinions and regional interests, with amiability often the only common denominator. Also, whiskey. ‘I suspect,’ Sen. Talmadge once wrote, ‘alcoholism is as much of an occupational disease among politicians as black lung is among coal miners.’ He was speaking from personal experience: in 1979, he admitted publicly to having a drinking problem. Dirksen, meanwhile, was known for plying obstinate holdouts with booze.

This more genial Washington helped ratify some of the most consequential legislation of the 20th century. It’s largely gone now and for largely understandable reasons. Yet it’s also essential if you want to understand Joe Biden, a man from the ancien régime struggling to adapt to the new order.

It’s a fun read, but surprisingly, the conservative Spectator USA omits Joe’s own role in the transition from the clubbable, pubbable old days of Congress to our present (well, pre-Wuhan Virus) moment: Joe Biden Owes Clarence Thomas an Apology. “After all, it was Biden who helped turn Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into nasty, hyper-politicized smear-fests that set the precedent for the Kavanaugh hearing.”