The collective sighs of relief and whoops of joy were audible throughout the free-thinking world. Democrat Joe Biden eclipsed incumbent Donald Trump at the polls to become the 46th president of the United States, and also the 23rd to have Irish roots.
He may be the oldest president in American history, but Biden’s timing appears to be what it and the world needs right now after four years of a Trump administration in which the president has been the host of his own orchestrated game show with contestants who can never win. It was a game which ultimately became a pantomime. Many Americans were mesmerised, but ultimately it was found unfulfilling and ridiculous.
Looking back it is hard to believe he fulfilled his four year term, and unfathomable to understand how the election was even so close, leading one to wonder would Americans have voted the same if not for Covid-19 pandemic?
Trump has been credited with putting a few dollars into the pockets of the workers, but it is another thing to put millions into the pockets of his own elite - and that is something of which not only the Trump administration is guilty. But it continues to divide people, and while Trumpism remains, it will take a huge effort over the next four years for a Democratic party to reduce some of that inequality, not just in pay packets, to bring those two divides closer together.
They have already made a strong start. Kamala Harris becomes the first female US vice-president, and Joe Biden has already begun to administer the necessary salve. He is a different character, decent, hardworking, experienced in politics, a man who has suffered personal losses and tragedies, and he has started on the right tone - one of a statesman - when reaching out to Republicans immediately.
“It is time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again. And to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies. They are Americans. They are Americans,” he said.
However, some Americans will always love the bombastic style of Trump, preferring the tone of his rhetoric rather than its substance, the confrontational style, the blurred lines between lies and truth - just too many to mention - his locker room banter, belittling soldiers, questioning Obama’s birth, building his ‘great wall’, stoking white supremacists. It was head-spinning stuff, and that was only in the first few months of his administration.
There have been presidents with their own frailties and misdeeds; few have attracted such extreme followers or divisions. Were there any presidents with fewer virtues? Fears of him trying to cling to power only makes a continued mockery of the USA that was once a model for democracy and republicanism.
So Donald Trump needs to realise this election is ‘well and truly over’. Cead mile failte Joe Biden.
