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Prolonging the Agony...

It's Over, Joe, but You Don't Know it Yet

By Frank Van Riper

Photography Columnist

If Joe Biden had not blown it during his first presidential debate with Donald Trump on June 27^th, his middling performance during his first press conference in EIGHT MONTHS might actually have helped his campaign.

But it didn’t. It didn’t because we cannot unsee a doddering 81year-old Biden floundering, wide-eyed and pathetic, before a torrent of lies and bullshit from his Republican opponent two weeks earlier.

It also didn’t help that, in his compulsion to appear on top of things in foreign policy after the just-ended NATO summit in Washington, Biden didn’t know when to shut up. His answers seemed to become longer, more rambling and more convoluted as the evening progressed.

If Biden was looking to score a rhetorical home run to revitalize his plummeting campaign, all he managed was a bloop single.

Still, and to his credit, Biden ramped up his rhetoric against Trump in impassioned campaign speeches and at other events post-press conference. At one event he called Trump a rapist (in re: Trump’s sexual assault on writer E. Jean Carroll, for which he was convicted of defamation in a civil trial in New York.) He also called Trump a crook and a con man, and, for all I know, will wind up branding the Putin-loving Pustule a traitor.

But will it matter? God alone knows, and I have my doubts.

Watch for this all over the country if the worst president in our history ever wins the White House again. ©Frank Van Riper

He once promised that his would be a transitional, or “bridge,” presidency—presumably one term to pave the way for a new, younger, more energetic generation of Democratic candidates, including his smart, telegenic, no-bullshit Veep, Kamala Harris.

But no more.

“If I may, Mr. President,” asked NPR’s Asma Khalid at the post-summit press conference, “In 2020, you referred to yourself as being a ‘bridge’ candidate for a younger, fresher generation of Democratic leaders. And I wanted to know, what changed?”

Biden: “What changed was the gravity of the situation I inherited in terms of the economy, our foreign policy, and domestic division.

“And I think — I — I won’t put words in anybody’s mouth. Most presidential historians give me credit for having accomplished more than most any president since Johnson and maybe before that to get major pieces of legislation passed.

“And what I realized was, my long time in the Senate had equipped me to have the wisdom to know how to deal with the Congress to get things done. We got more major legislation passed that no one thought would happen.

“And I want to finish it — to get that finished. If tomorrow — if — if you — if we had a circumstance wherev- — the — there was a lineup, and I didn’t — hadn’t inherited what I did and we just moved things along — anyway, it’s — it’s going to change.”

Biden’s first three paragraphs above make sense. But the fourth is, charitably, word salad, as officially transcribed by the White House.

The only person who spouts worse gobbledygook—virtually every time he speaks in public—is Donald Trump, whose own glaring mental acuity issues have been overshadowed—for now—by Biden’s.

I was in the NY Daily News Washington Bureau for 20 years--I wrote the story that prompted the classic frontpage headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead." Some 43 years later, in 2018, this equally classic front may top even that one.

Sweet Jesus, what a choice we as a nation now face as this godawful presidential election approaches.

Is it any wonder that senior Democrats on Capitol Hill and around the country are lighting candles for Biden to finally face the reality that he is not the same person he was even two years ago, and that, if he does not step aside, he will lose to an even more diminished fascist felon, who will literally destroy our democracy.

I yield the floor to my 27-year-old grandson Max Goodman. A summa cum laude graduate of Columbia, Max now is a climate activist and data scientist:

“To a generation that has been economically betrayed by the boomer+ political machine, any centrist over 70 years old starts out as a liability. Add to that a consistent moral failing re: the mass murder of civilians in Gaza, weaker-than-promised action on the climate crisis, and the submissive decision not to pack the Supreme Court to staunch democracy’s unraveling - and you’re in dangerous territory.

“Add to THAT months of blatant dementia that we are being asked by our elders to ignore - and you are left with a walking embodiment of generational resentment.

“There are things I’ve appreciated about the Biden administration. And I will vote for whoever the Dems run in November. But you cannot count on the turnout you got from young leftists in 2020. Turnout that, I will remind you, narrowly saved the entire election thanks to 5 cities (Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Madison, and Milwaukee).

“We are mad. We’re mad enough that one old narcissist is willing to burn it all down to stay in power. Do NOT leave us with the choice between two.”

Pause and reflect on Max's words. Because if he is right--and if his generation sits out this election, effectively handing it to Trump--it will be a long, cold, lonely winter, and beyond. © Frank Van Riper

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AND NOW FOR SOME PHOTOGRAPHY...

POSTSCRIPT: Since this is, after all, a photography column, may I offer the latest in my ongoing series of floral ‘portraits.’

I literally made this shot in our kitchen, taking a break from my agita over the 2024 election. These are Calla lillies in a lovely green jar. Judy had bought them just before friends came over for dinner. The next morning I was struck by how the sun lit up the leaded glass over the kitchen sink, and--as important--how a tungsten downlight perfectly illuminated the flowers, almost as if I had used studio lights.

The first handheld shots were made at 1SO 1600, f. 4 at 1/250th. They lacked the overall sharpness that I required, so I got out my tripod and totally changed the exposure. Now it was ISO 500, f. 20 at 1/50th, with the shutter tripped by the onboard timer.

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Frank Van Riper grew up in the Bronx and was a reporter and editor in the New York Daily News Washington Bureau for 20 years. Now a commercial and documentary photographer, his current book is Recovered Memory: New York & Paris 1960-1980. His next book, done in collaboration with Judith Goodman, his wife and partner, is The Green Heart of Italy: Umbria and its Ancient Neighbors, to be published in Fall, 2025 by Daylight Books

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Van Riper Named to Communications Hall of Fame

Frank Van Riper addresses CCNY Communications Alumni at National Arts Club in Manhattan after induction into Communications Alumni Hall of Fame, May 2011. (c) Judith Goodman