Age impairs the body but frees the tongue. Joe Biden proves both points. The man who looks each one of the 80 years that he will clock up in November has acquired the cussed candour of the old.
The beliefs of Donald Trump add up to “semi-fascism”, says the US president. Much of the Republican party is a menace to the “foundations of our republic”. “Whose side are you on?”, asks Biden, with the stark dualism that he used to avoid in favour of cross-partisan bonhomie. Here — say the scandalised, some of whom are liberals — is a president in divisive mood.
No, just a realistic one. True, the mise-en-scène of his Philadelphia speech last week, with its flanking US Marines, was weird. He too often conflated anti-Democrats with anti-democrats. But the speech did not create a divide. It acknowledged one that already exists. The alternative — exhorting national unity — has been tested to destruction. “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America”, said Barack Obama in 2004. Yes, there is. “Let us listen to one another,” said Biden himself at his inauguration, as though no one had thought of that before. This stuff won’t do anymore. A fact of American life since the 1990s is that a large minority of voters struggles to accept the legitimacy of any Democratic president. Appealing to a phoney togetherness while this goes on is untenable.