That's impossible!

I'm pretty sure I was told that Joe Biden was old, senile, and unloved. Perhaps those people were wrong, based on this:

👀Joe Biden has a positive approval rating among registered voters for the first time in years, per the latest NPR/PBS/Marist Poll.

49% approve / 45% disapprove

2/13-15, 1210 RVs, mixed mode, ±3.5https://t.co/qzJgQw35fg

— Jacob Rubashkin (@JacobRubashkin) February 22, 2023

Now, as I've stated before, I take all polling with a grain of salt, whether it's polling like this or polling which states that Pres. Biden is more unpopular than the clap. However, there is no denying that his numbers took a nosedive after the media went into a snitfit after the pullout from Afghanistan. Rather than highlighting the massive effort which rescued over 100,000 Afghans in an airlift the kind which the world had never seen, or reporting that he was following a deal his feckless predecessor had made with the Taliban—a deal which if he were to go back on it would have meant tens of thousands of more US troops being sent to the country—or reporting on the fact that the Afghan National Army melted like snow in the spring in the face of the Taliban saying "boo", the media basically accused Pres. Biden of cutting and running from a country which it had ignored for more than a decade, once the sexiness of US special forces dressed in native garb and calling in airstrikes in the weeks after 9/11 wore off. The likes of Richard Engel excoriated Pres. Biden, without giving a rationale as to why, after 20 years, another 20 years would have certainly turned Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy. Afghans—especially Afghan women—got the worst of all deals; but if the army which the US had spent billions of dollars building up refused to fight and slithered away in the face of the Taliban advance, what hope did any US nation building have?

Pres. Biden's unpopularity stemmed from that act of political courage. He did something which even our beloved Barack Obama was unable to do, for various reasons. (*Cough*racism*Muslim Commie*cough.) He, in fact, did something which no American president since Dwight Eisenhower had done: leave a war which the US had no chance of winning, because "winning" was an ephemeral concept. But war is the health of the infotainment complex, and having Afghanistan in the back pocket for dashing war correspondents to visit once a year was good for atmosphere.

However, Scranton Joe, unlike nearly everyone else in the political arena, doesn't govern by polling, and doesn't act via popularity. Like Pres. Obama, he has a spine of steel, and will do what he thinks is right, political optics be damned. If the men of Afghanistan wouldn't defend their country, then the men and women of the US armed forces really had no hope to salvage the situation. We lost Afghanistan the minute George W. Bush turned his gaze to Iraq; the following two decades merely postponed the inevitable.

But Joe Biden had something beyond the price of rubies: time. The withdrawal happened in his first year. He knew he'd take a hit. But he did it anyway, knowing he could ride the tempest and come out at the other end. And now it seems like his instincts were right. We saw that in the results of the midterms, where the Red Wave was a puddle. We saw that in last summer's string of legislative victories. And now we're seeing it in polling, unreliable as it is.

As a man getting up in years, I've come to appreciate that precious resource called time. Things which seem dire today will be fine in a day or a week. Nothing stays the same. You never dip your toes into the same river twice. While Nikki Haley brays about giving politicians over 75 cognitive tests, Pres. Biden shows by his actions that age has its wisdom which we ignore to our detriment. Age is not always married to wisdom—cf. his predecessor—but when it is, we are all the richer for it. Joe Biden did what had to be done in Afghanistan. He did what had to be done on Covid. And now he's beginning to reap the rewards. It's been only two years since he assumed office, but what a two years. We are buffeted by history, and Pres. Biden has seen that history up close for decades. What do Haley or Ron DeSantis know of history? They want to ban its teaching. The wisdom of the elders is not something to scoff at.

I'm supremely confident that 2024 will be a monumental trouncing of the GOP. I'd rather be us than them. 

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