Rumors and rumors of rumors continue to swirl around the nation. Is Biden going to withdraw, is he not? Who will stand in his stead? Will he resign? He said this to who and this to them and they say…. Staffers say…Insiders say…Jill Biden said…. (It’s probably all true because I doubt the president can make up his own mind.) Meanwhile, on Wednesday Jim Geraghty made the case as plainly as it can be made, that by all reports and what we have all seen independently, Joe Biden is incapable of fulfilling his duties as POTUS. Game…Set…Match! There is not much to discuss here – unless there are considerations thought more important than the actual functioning of the presidency – matters of politics and the personal. And that set me thinking.

We’ve seen this before in the scandals of the TV preachers. Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggert, Peter Popoff, the list is long. I’ve seen it happen in “ministries” (I hesitate to call them churches) smaller and less public many, many times. The leader fails, miserably, and yet they hang on to power in some fashion. That which is being lead does not quite let go of that leadership, failed though it is. The failures are clear, the damage to the institution obvious, but there is all sorts of sturm und drang about what to do about the guy that is supposed to be in charge, but clearly is otherwise occupied.

Wait….I can almost hear people screaming about the fact that the child abuse cases of the Catholic church are missing from my list. That’s because they are different than the scandals of Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism and that difference strikes at the heart of the point I want to make. It took a while for the Roman Catholic church to wake up to those scandals, but once it did, it got busy fixing them, and the church stands, scars evident, but trying to get back to doing what it is supposed to be doing- and succeeding for the most part. What’s the difference?

Evangelical and Pentecostal ministries are personality driven – they are a reflection of their leader, not their mission – when the leader fails, the institution fails, which typically means it dies. The Roman Catholic church, one of the oldest institutions on the planet, has not made that mistake, the institution and its mission exceed any leader within it. Therein lies the key difference.

So, back to the Executive Branch of our government. Barack Obama was no ordinary president. The Democratic party did not get him elected, they anointed him. As the first African-American president he was their version of the Holy Grail. They imbued him with an air of the holy. And he was unafraid to take advantage of that fact. Readers of history will know that George Washington was granted a similar aura – viewed almost as a savior. Washington refused at every turn – every turn – to accept the holy mantle that so many wanted to place on his shoulders. But not Obama, he reveled in it, luxuriated in it, and used it to try and “fundamentally change” the country. When Obama took office he was viewed by many as if, and did not hesitate to act as if, he was bigger than the office.

Then along came Trump. A man with an incredibly out-sized ego, and not afraid to show it. Whereas Obama’s very equally massive ego was disguised in his demeanor, Trump wore his on his sleeve. Trump was presumed to be Obama but on the opposite side of the aisle. There is no denying Trump’s ego, but he proved to be willing to be constrained by the demands of the office. But most people could not see the forest for the trees, all they saw was the ego. And so, in the public’s mind, the office had subordinated to the personality occupying the office.

Most people know that is not how things are supposed to work, and that as the failure of the preachers discussed above leads to the demise of the institution, so they feared for the institution of the presidency. And so they elected Joe Biden – who they presumed, based on his decades of public service, would restore the office and the institution to its proper ascendancy.

But alas, such has not proven to be the case. The dilemma we now find ourselves in is plainly driven by the fact that Biden, or at least those around him as Biden appears to be a blank slate much of the time, believe they are bigger than the office.

What is at stake right now is far, far larger than the individuals involved or the partisan politics that have come to invade even the most basic of concerns in our nation. What is at stake is our very form of government – it can only survive if it is more important than those that operate within it.

I have no clue how this thing is going to play out. Biden might just resign any moment and he might see the election through. He might refuse the nomination. But whatever happens in terms of Joe Biden, it’s only for six months. We have an election in November and a new president in January and that is what is going to make the lasting difference. The question for the election is who will occupy the office and make sure the office is bigger than the occupant. Donald Trump, foibles notwithstanding – most notably that ego – has already shown he does not consider himself bigger than the office. I don’t care who stands in the Democrat slot in November, the party is embroiled, and has been since Obama, in the politics of personality. We have to set them aside until they can figure this out, or like the churches described earlier, fail and be replaced.

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