Fireside Chats by the President. I have just heard that suggestion. The suggestion that President Biden speak to the people regularly and often in Fireside Chats is a good idea. A real good idea.
Talking policy is not working. Not because the policies -- Build Back Better for example -- are bad but because for whatever reason, they're not working. Your poll standings are in the basement. Many of your proposed policies are not even being seriously discussed. Whatever you do when you talk policy, the yahoos will criticize you. Criticize is most of what they do, if not the only thing they do. And they have proven that they will even make things up whenever they see TV cameras.
So there will be criticism talking policy. And talking policy won't get the results you and we want. I know you think that it will, and you have surrounded yourself with people who think that changing policy will change America, but it doesn't. Not so long as there are yahoos and Second President Manchin. You didn't invent this system, Joe, but you need to think now about what you and we need and not so much about what you want. Discard the preconceived notions and embrace reality: What your Administration is doing is not working to get the change you want.
So change what you're doing.
Fireside Chats are in your wheelhouse. They call upon your strengths. They call upon you to calm the anxieties of a troubled people who long for something, someone, to believe in. Fireside Chats give you the opportunity to be grandfatherly, which fits with your age and your position now. The yahoos will still call you names, but they will have a harder time convincing anyone to believe anything but good things about their grandfather.
Fireside Chats also draw upon your capacity to empathize with people. You talk to us like our family and friends talk to us. We've heard and seen that many times after many tragedies and disasters. You have shown that you will be there when people need your help in a crisis. Now you need to show your empathy about the problems many people face in daily living. Your empathy needs to be sustained.
And, yes, the yahoos will criticize even your empathy. But regardless of what they do and think, does anyone seriously believe that attacking empathy and demanding cruelty is a winning proposition?
One of your political heroes is FDR. FDR was able to balance Fireside Chats with speeches that pulled no punches. ("I do not shrink from their hatred, I welcome it!")
You can too, Joe. Maybe you can't be FDR. There was only one of him, after all.
But you can be Joe Biden.
Joe Biden may be exactly what we need right now.
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