The Economist - USA (2020-11-28)

78 Books & arts The EconomistNovember 28th 2020

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Johnson Average Joe

The president-elect lacks a silver tongue and makes for poor tv. That may be an asset

D

uring theObama years, the Onion, a

satirical online newspaper, carried a

series of articles about a man it referred

to as “Diamond Joe” and “The President

of Vice”. It featured headlines like “Shirt-

less Biden Washes Trans Am in White

House Driveway” and “Biden Huddling

With Closest Advisers on Whether to

Spend 200 Bucks on Scorpions Tickets”.

The real Joe Biden, then vice-presi-

dent, was a teetotaling and avuncular

elder statesman, not a hair-metal-loving

party animal. But the caricature of him as

a regular guy drew on an element of

truth. The now-president-elect, the son

of a second-hand-car salesman, will be

the first president since Ronald Reagan

to lack an Ivy League degree, having

finished near the bottom of his class at

both the University of Delaware and

Syracuse University’s law school.

And this is reflected in his use of

language. In his speech, he is such an

everyman as to defy parody. “Saturday

Night Live”, which has featured imper-

sonators for every president since Chevy

Chase’s Gerald Ford, has yet to settle on a

memorable Joe Biden. Forced to name

Bidenisms, you might single out “ma-

larkey”, his favoured disparagement for

humbug, or “Here’s the deal”, to signal

that he’s about to cut the malarkey. His

favourite vocative is the folksy “Folks...”.

In his first debate with Donald Trump,

perhaps the most arresting thing he said

was (to his constantly interrupting oppo-

nent) “Keep yappin’, man.”

He is, it is true, known for gaffes,

though these are often overstated. Com-

peting with Barack Obama for the Demo-

cratic nomination in 2007-08, Mr Biden

praised his future boss as “the first main-

stream African-American” to run for the

presidency, “who is articulate and bright

and clean”. (A gap before “who” made

out, the contrasting styles of his prede-

cessors may have made Mr Biden’s deep-

ly prosaic register an asset after all.

Receiving his party’s nomination in

2008, Mr Obama said future generations

might remember the occasion as “the

moment when the rise of the oceans

began to slow and our planet began to

heal”. His high-flown rhetoric raised

expectations to messianic levels. Dashed

hopes led many voters to look for some-

one who sounded as little like a poli-

tician as possible. In 2016 that meant a

political novice who eschewed focus-

grouped formulations in favour of provo-

cative, often vulgar tirades. Not only did

voters not mind; Mr Trump’s outrageous

style was hugely effective. His vernacular

delivery implied that he was a real boss,

not a backslapping hack, with unique

skills to get things done. But in office his

coarseness turned some voters off, even

as it thrilled others.

All that makes this an ideal time for

Average Joe, for whom being able to talk

fluidly at all was a hard-won achieve-

ment. Mr Biden grew up with a severe

stutter, which he overcame as a young

man. In one of the most touching scenes

of his campaign, he told a boy who stut-

ters, “Don’t let it define you. You are

smart as hell.” Mr Biden took the boy’s

number and called him with some tips

that had helped him; later the boy spoke

to the Democratic National Convention.

Even careful presidents make gaffes

under constant scrutiny. In office, Mr

Biden will no doubt give comics plenty of

material to sharpen their imperson-

ations. But if he gets tongue-tied or says

the wrong thing every now and then,

well, so do most people. After 12 years of

extraordinary political speech, Amer-

icans may be ready for a president who

sounds like them.

clear that he did not mean previous Afri-

can-American candidates lacked cleanli-

ness, just that they had been less “main-

stream”.) While vice-president, he stood

just a bit too close to a microphone as he

said “This is a big fucking deal” into Mr

Obama’s ear at the signing ceremony for

their health-care reform. He once asked a

wheelchair-bound state senator to stand

and be recognised.

These bloopers give the impression of a

mouth running faster than a brain. Mr

Obama was famous for long, thoughtful

pauses; not so Mr Biden. His campaign

speeches, like his questions as a longtime

Senate committee chairman, tended to

ramble. He once mystifyingly called a

young student who asked a tough question

a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier”. Accused

of corruption by a voter in Iowa, a bit of

hotheaded “Diamond Joe” came out: he

called the man a “damn liar” and chal-

lenged him to a press-up contest. And he

mused that, were they in high school, he

would “beat the hell” out of Mr Trump.

Instead, he beat him in politics, with

words rather than fists. As things turned

plicable force of nature who could rise

from a luminous improvisation at the cla-

vier for a round of meowing like a cat and

leaping over the furniture”.

He is the subject of many biographies,

but the leading one, by Hermann Abert, is

100 years old and 1,600 pages long. Mr

Swafford, himself a composer and a pro-

gramme-writer for the Boston Symphony

Orchestra, offers an updated, accessible

and authoritative life, beautifully written

and full of astute critical judgments and in-

cisive notes on the works. The overture to

“The Marriage of Figaro” is all “quicksilver

brightness” and “indefatigable energy”;

the Piano Trio in B-flat Major has “only a

touch of galant preciousness”. “Eine kleine

Nachtmusik” is “crystalline perfection”.

Mozart’s way with melody and keen

view of human nature—his letters reveal

an almost Dickensian ability to paint char-

acter—combined to elevate opera from

light fare to a serious medium, the author

contends. “His wit, his often-mordant

scrutiny of people and their foibles, his fas-

cination with the frenzies of love and love-

making—all this made him the consum-

mate composer” of the form, Mr Swafford

reckons. As his characters scrambled

around the stage, lost in the human com-

edy, Mozart gave them divine arias.

He was admired but not adored in his

time. Most of his music adhered to conven-

tional structures yet went over the heads of

the average listener. Legend has it that his

most important patron, Emperor Joseph II,

reacted to one performance with back-

handed criticism: “Too beautiful for our

ears, my dear Mozart, and monstrous many

notes!” Mozart, irrepressible and ever

cheeky, supposedly replied: “Exactly as

many as necessary, Your Majesty!” 7