The Biden White House would do well to take a cue from Hollywood.
In the “The Godfather” movie, mob rivals nearly execute the don, Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando.
In failing health, Corleone tempers ambition and initiates a succession plan, handing the reins to son Michael, played by Al Pacino. Thus does the Brando character, by stepping back, protect and solidify the power of his family. The elder grooms the younger, with the duty no longer to fight but to train those who do.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
The parallel cannot escape our president.
The inevitability of failing health will eventually come knocking for us all. To pretend that no one’s at home is not helpful; it’s merely evasion of acceptance. An open-door policy better attends to the reality of a global community.
Polls in poorer Black communities show that these folk are losing faith in the Democrats. Worse, some are falling prey to delusory promises offered by former President Donald Trump and his followers.
That base has got to be protected by and for the Democratic Party. The Biden White House must accept the need to shift strategies. Powerful African Americans — such as former President Barack Obama, Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, former attorney general Eric Holder and the impressive Rev. Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia — must speak truth to power. It is these elites, after all, who did so much at the outset to help secure the president his high office.
We cannot claim the overriding objective is to stop Trump in one breath and in another insist that Biden is best suited to do so. One doesn’t bring a whip to a gunfight.
The president cannot be tasked with directing the nation for the next several years. The goal, instead, must be to secure the installation of a vigorous successor.
By no means should this agenda be construed as disrespectful to Biden. On the contrary, this man has done excellent service, both as president and as Obama’s vice president.
This fall’s election is best seen as a relay race and not a long-jump. It’s time to pass the baton. This is said out of warm regard for our chief’s sterling service and now, vitally, for his legacy.
Biden should be urged — by a small group of senior and influential African American figures in the party — to transfer power.
That must be done on the understanding that Biden’s vice president has not and will not herself enter such a plea. She must, however, be made aware of this prospective, collective overture from a great family of forever friends and allies.
Preston King is an award-winning author and distinguished professor of political philosophy who has taught as a tenured scholar in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas. In March 2000, the Georgia native received a presidential pardon from the Clinton White House after spending nearly four decades in exile, stemming from a Jim Crow-era draft conviction.
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