On October 22, 1962, I had just turned ten when my parents called me in to watch President Kennedy give what they said was an important speech.
It was his Cuban missile crisis speech. I sat on the floor in front of the black and white television, listening to the president talk about the “maximum peril” of nuclear weapons. He spoke about courage and commitment; he accused the Soviet Union of lying. Judging from my parents’ reactions, we were on the brink of disaster, and Kennedy was doing what he needed to do as president—standing firm on ground carved out by presidents before him, like Abraham Lincoln, who I had studied in school. I’d learned about the Emancipation Proclamation, signed in 1863 to abolish slavery.
I didn’t understand everything President Kennedy was talking about, but I knew courage when I saw it.
Twenty-five years later, I sat in front of a television and watched as my father stood in front of the Berlin Wall, raised his voice, and said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” I had many ideological differences with my father, but I never doubted his courage. I later found out that speechwriters and advisors had repeatedly removed that line from his speech; undeterred, he kept putting it back. Later that same year, in December 1987, he and Gorbachev signed the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty, agreeing on the destruction of ground-launch ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of between 500 and 1,500 kilometers.
Again, I stood in awe of his courage. He was, by the way, 76 years old in 1987.
Frequently, when Joe Biden’s age is mentioned, my father is inserted into the story, with the mention that he was 69 when he was first elected president and was, at that time, the oldest man to take office. I find myself amused every time, since 69 hardly seems old these days. But my amusement is short-lived because I don’t think age is the issue. Courage is.
Joe Biden became president at a dangerously tense time politically, both in America and abroad. There is no more Mikhail Gorbachev to partner with on historic agreements. There is, instead, Vladimir Putin and his maniacal killing spree. There is a polarized America where disagreements erupt in gunfire and parents are afraid to send their kids to school because six-year-olds are being slaughtered.
It is also a time when our planet is dying. We’ve been warned repeatedly that we are running out of time to do anything meaningful about climate change, that we are at a critical tipping point. And still Joe Biden approved the Willow Project on Alaska’s north shore in the National Petroleum Reserve. Despite giving voice to the perils of climate change, Biden approved a drilling project that will produce 9.2 million metric tons of carbon pollution a year, which is equal to 2 million gas powered cars. His compromise of issuing new protections for federal land and waters in Alaska does nothing to diminish the harm the Willow Project will cause.
Sometimes compromise is necessary, even wise. But often courage is needed, and that means you don’t compromise, you stand for what’s right.
Reportedly, many younger voters who once supported Joe Biden have turned away from him because of the Willow Project. They want a planet they can inherit that’s safe to inhabit, and we have failed them, generation after generation. They’re looking for courage in a leader and they aren’t finding it.
I wish I could point to someone standing on the sidelines and say “that person should run for office,” but so far I don’t see anyone. Perhaps there is a well of courage in Joe Biden that we haven’t yet seen. Perhaps he will address the nation and unearth that. Perhaps if we stop nattering on about his age and ask him to be brave and stand up for the only planet we have he’ll remember a line from Kennedy’s Cuban missile crisis speech: “The greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.”
