Dear Joe,
You are a man who has stuck to his guns, and who cares passionately about your cause, which has always been to improve the quality of life for middle-class people – a cause which the Canadian media have always treated as a fifth column.
It is great to have an inspiration like you in this crazy world. As a filmmaker, my hero – to love and admire in that way – was Martin Scorsese. As a director, I love the not-so-subtle pictures of Wes Anderson. As a musician, I admire every shred of Paul Simon.
And let me just throw in a plea to you: for the honour of the pater familias, let’s get yourselves up to that superb Georgian hotel you have been considering: It is called The Ivy, after all. From that gilt-edged, peregrine nest, we could oversee everything from press conferences to deeply irritating spin to unobtrusive production. My god, it’s like an actual drawing room or villa. Like you.
I know this is going to be very difficult. Yes, I know you are bored and nauseous of campaigning. But Joe Biden knows the entire gamut of emotions in American presidential politics. Once he sees that Mr Trump had ordered state of emergency powers to speed up the firing of Michael Flynn, even he can see the disreputableness of this and will have no problem issuing a simple reminder that he will have been called “fat fingers” by the president of the United States.
Why don’t you just try to fix it, Joe? The only thing I can think of is if you get out of the House of Representatives and into the Senate, you will hopefully find that you won’t have to worry so much about that rust-bucket Mitch McConnell. By the way, the UK’s George W Bush was another kind of president who sucked his thumb to get his way.
Best,
Susan
Oh dear, Susan. The British government has a history of providing non-interventionist protection to errant heads of state who need an umbrella when the terrible weather turns outside. Tony Blair headed the same way in 2001 after the shootings at Columbine. He flew to Wyoming where he was briefly introduced to the splendid prospect of high adventure, a great experience for anyone who has lost control of their Twitter account and let someone else take their message. Despite not getting invited to that fire escape, Blair is now a global war criminal. Will Mr Trump now be defenestrated just as a result of this exchange?
Over here at home, a selection of our No 10 hacks have expressed unease at Mr Trump’s plans for a North American free trade deal. However, we probably just don’t have the expertise to do what you obviously could. Perhaps, as Ms Delacourt says, we could sit around the Ivy and “directly refute the nonsense of the Twitter feeds”? Hah!
I know you have also been thinking of this novel project, but have paused to notice that now the midterm elections have passed, Democrats could gain control of both houses of Congress in January 2019. It seems it would have been a good idea to take Mr Biden with you as a delegate to Congress, which is where the national affairs matters will play out as the two parties pounce on the immigration issue.
The Daily Telegraph, London
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