reader. writer.

I want to share my thoughts about Biden and that debate, but perhaps not the way you might think.

To be honest, I am still processing what happened. For that matter, I was already trying to process Jon Stewart’s monologue upon his return to the Daily Show, not to mention experiences I had serving on university search committees (a traumatizing experience—do not recommend).

Again and again, an illusion is propagated that harms us all, no matter how old we are, no matter our current state of ability, no matter any other category you might consider helpful or harmful to success in this world. The illusion is that it is possible to always be “strong,” (with an implied ideal of perfection). That to show any frailty, to experience, for example, fatigue, a sore throat, a stutter, a wrinkle, a flaw, an error, a hesitation, is to be weak. Even worse, people act as if it is appropriate to judge people based on standards grounded in such illusions. 

I frequently witness people give more weight to louder voices than soft ones, even when the softer voice provides more accurate and insightful information. In that Daily Show monologue, Jon Stewart presented a photo of Conan as what “we want” as voters, which struck me as accurate in a damning way—this illusion equates leadership to a loud muscled man, reifying the idea that people are more likely to follow someone they perceive as loud and muscled and masculine. In the search process, I witnessed this bias enacted by women as well as men. This false concept of leadership more often than not results in hiring someone incompetent rather than someone with the experience and insights to guide us in a respectful, democratic, inclusive, and pluralistic way. Of course, what is also imaginary is that a (literally) loud muscled man is invulnerable—a loud muscled man may already be or may become disabled or experience challenges at any time, for countless reasons. Let me stress:  disability, temporary or permanent, doesn’t make anyone less of a worthwhile person, nor incapable of contributing in meaningful ways. This is what is so harmful, so frustrating: judging people based on superficial differences rather than evidence, facts, experience, insights, and performance records sets us up to have incompetent leadership far too often.

In this context, it is as if we can’t even see what is before us. Is it possible that Biden’s stumbles indicated something more troubling? Maybe, but if that’s true, I need more data than one debate in which an 82-year-old man with a stutter and a bad cold had a few rough moments and was sometimes hard to hear. Right now, the record shows that Biden is a highly effective president maximizing his options within a checks and balance system that is hampered by a gerrymandered Congress and a Supreme Court dominated by right wing ideologues/religious zealots/partisan puppets, some shrugging off even minimal ethical standards.

Our democracy is jeopardized by an electorate and some members of the media with a short attention span, a shorter memory, toxic information sources, and a tendency to judge by appearance rather than substance. That harms us as a country, yes, especially if we turn a presidency that should be responsive to the voters into a cult of personality dictatorship. And it is this tendency that alas set the stakes so high, in which the results of the election may determine whether or not we get to vote again. For that reason, I am glad to support Harris and Walz, who are making the case for the same values underlying Biden’s presidency, because that, in the end, matters more than whose name appears on our ballots. 

What continues to bother me is that this phenomenon, this illusion of the strong man, harms us not just as a country but also individually. Here are my radical thoughts: What if it’s okay to stumble sometimes? What if it’s okay to say the wrong word sometimes? What if we didn’t have to live in fear of even a minor misstep, worrying that someone will laugh and mock us for things that have no substance? 

It is impossible to attain imaginary standards of strength and perfection. Each one of us has frailties and flaws, and every one of us makes missteps. And guess what? Everyone ages, and aging does not detract from our worth. We all have value, worth, and dignity at all times, not just when we appear, fleetingly, “perfect.”