MEMORIES – When I read the headline, “Is Biden the New Humphrey,” over  William McGurn’s Wall Street Journal column, of course, I was interested in the comparison McGurn saw between the two former vice presidents, Joe Biden and Hubert Humphrey.

“Like Mr. Biden, Humphrey was a garrulous establishment liberal and vice president who had spent decades in the Senate.  Each man was nominated by a divided Democrat Party,” McGurn notes.  “Both were dogged by the enthusiasm for their more progressive runners-up, Sens. Eugene McCarthy and Bernie Sanders.”

In September 1968, the New York Times reported that law and order was “one of the most powerful issues running in Richard Nixon’s favor this year.  Now, Biden is facing President Trump, who has declared himself the law and order president, as Democrats are “egging on protestors and undermining police,” notes McGurn.

“This refusal of Democrat politicians to hold lawbreakers accountable is what’s really hurting Mr. Biden’s case,” McGurn believes.

Reflecting back to 1968, McGurn points out that while Humphrey’s strongest constituency was organized labor, members were repelled by the lawlessness in the streets.  “It seemed to leave Humphrey paralyzed,” wrote McGurn.

“Mr. Biden’s challenge is to show Middle America he is strong enough to end the mayhem without alienating the wing of his party sympathetic to those causing it.

A PERSONAL MEMORY OF HUMPHREY – In 1965, while serving in a public affairs capacity with the U.S. Air Force, I accompanied Humphrey on a tour of one of the Strategic Air Command’s Titan II missile silos in the Arizona desert.

Donning a headset, he was outwardly impressed while listening to the crew conduct a simulated launch. As I wrote about the experience later, I noted that the usually smiling Humphrey took it all very seriously.  Pointing up in the silo during the elevator ride, however, he naively asked if that was a nuclear warhead atop the missile.  We assured him that it was, while suppressing a laugh.

Looking back, and knowing what I know about Biden today, I believe he might have asked the same foolish question in the missile silo. 

AS I HAVE LEARNED that 102 of the 175 people arrested in Kenosha on charges including violating curfew, burglary, carrying concealed weapons and possession of controlled substances, were from outside the city, I believe it points to the fact that outsiders, probably paid, are sent in to riot, loot and burn.

It doesn’t excuse local and state law enforcement to allow peaceful protestors to be hijacked, and it tells me that those “peaceful protestors” have foolishly stayed on the scenes of violence, mingling with the likes of Antifa agitators who freely destroy businesses and livelihoods of their neighbors.

Whether they like it or not, those “peaceful protestors” are responsible by association for the torching of two automobile dealerships and their inventory, a furniture store and a camera store with a 100-year history in the city among other businesses.

President Trump met with citizens of Kenosha on Tuesday, meeting with business men and women who have lost their businesses.  The family of Jacob Blake, who is paralyzed from the waist down following a police shooting on August 27, 2020, refused to meet with the president, however, I understand they have agreed to meet with Joe Biden when he belatedly visits Kenosha.

While many Americans hear Biden attacking the president for stoking division, many Americans have concern that Biden won’t be strong enough – be his own man – to take on the radical left, weak on law and order. “On that point, his speech (in Pittsburgh Tuesday) wasn’t reassuring,” commented the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.

Ironically, it took the leftist media to wake up Biden, Barack Obama’s “lead from behind” partner that cities – Democrat cities – were being destroyed.  They had enabled Biden to hunker down in his basement as the complicit media (you know who they are) was doing its best to keep the public in the dark, telling them there was nothing to see, according to Gerard Baker of the Wall Street Journal. They were in denial, and refused to acknowledge there was anything wrong.

So, now you know the old man has emerged from his basement again, fresh from his last outing, where he was anointed the Covid-19 savior, willing to put the nation through another lockdown at the behest of scientific experts.

He would now have you believe that he’s the man to restore peace in those cities, despite the fact that he is weak on law and order, and even agreed that funding for the police should be “redirected.”

Now that he is out, it’s time for U.S. Attorney John Durham to reveal to Americans how the Obama-Biden administration worked from within to bring down the Trump presidency.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.