The Golden Bachelor reality TV show showed the US that sex is not just for spring chickens. Hearing aids and making out in a hot tub can go blissfully together.
Now comes the Golden President. Even though fretful questions about his age have engulfed Joe Bidenâs campaign, one thing is clear: his romance with Jill is still crackling.
I have observed that myself. At a party at his house at the Naval Observatory when he was vice-president, he told me about the frisson of watching his wife come down the stairs, dressed up for a special occasion.
They had been married for decades, he said, âbut my heart still goes pitty-pat when I see herâ.
Bidenâs uxorious relationship with his wife has sealed her role as his top navigator as he charts his reelection course as the oldest president in American history.
The amorous Biden marriage is chronicled in a new book by Katie Rogers, a New York Times White House correspondent: âAmerican Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, From Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden.â
Parenthetically, Rogers notes, âJoe may have tamped down his public bedroom declarations winning the presidency, but he has joked to aides that âgood sexâ is the key to a lasting and happy marriage, much to his wifeâs chagrin.â
[ Maureen Dowd: Democrats should grab their smelling salts for a long case of the vapors ]
Rogers recalls the time in 2004 when Biden was considering getting into the race to challenge John Kerry. During a meeting when aides were begging him to jump in, Jill walked into the room wearing a halter top with the word âNoâ scrawled on her stomach. Biden followed that sexy veto.
âIn 2006 Joe still seemed more interested in staying home with Jill than in running for the presidency,â Rogers writes, âand he said as much to a group of supporters that year: âIâd rather be at home making love to my wife while my children are asleep,â he said of his interest in the job.â
Bidenâs aides were accustomed to his TMI outpourings. The most famous profile done of him was Kitty Kelleyâs Washingtonian piece in 1974 â a year and a half after his beautiful young wife, Neilia, and baby daughter, Naomi, tragically died in a car crash at Christmastime.
âNeilia was my very best friend, my greatest ally, my sensuous lover,â he said. âThe longer we lived together the more we enjoyed everything from sex to sports.â In an office with 35 pictures of Neilia, he pointed out one of his âbeautiful millionaire wifeâ in a bikini, noting, âShe looks better than a Playboy bunny, doesnât she?â
He said he was so exhausted from campaigning for the Senate in 1972: âIâd come back too tired to talk to her. I might satisfy her in bed but I didnât have much time for anything else.â
Some â including Jill â might find the 81-year-old Golden Presidentâs frisky comments about the first lady cringey. But at least he is celebrating sensuality. Conservatives seem determined to stamp it out.
Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society conspired to install a radically conservative Supreme Court, which then overturned Roe as soon as it had the chance. Republicans thought they could finesse things with voters, but now they canât contain the puritanical, punitive forces sweeping the land.
Even Trump pushed back on the Alabama Supreme Courtâs ruling that frozen embryos have the rights of children, which is already wreaking havoc at fertility clinics and disrupting dreams of would-be parents.
âI strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious, little, beautiful baby,â Trump told a crowd in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Friday afternoon.
As the Times reported, Trump has told advisers he is leaning toward a 16-week national abortion ban with exceptions in the case of rape and incest and to save the life of the mother. He said he likes the number 16 because âitâs evenâ.
He has been campaigning more and more like a messenger from God. âNo one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration â I swear to you,â he told Christian broadcasters in DC on Thursday.
That great moral philosopher Trump mused: âIf you think about it, you have men, you have women, and you have religion.â
The former louche Gotham playboy knows that it will not help him in the race if his party is seen as a bunch of Cotton Mathers interfering in the lives of women who are in desperate straits and need an abortion, and women who are in desperate straits and want children.
Trump is trying to replace our democracy with a me-ocracy. But the Old Testament language of Alabamaâs chief justice, Tom Parker, shows that some of these zealots on courts want to replace our democracy with a theocracy.
In his concurring opinion, the justice quoted the book of Genesis: âTherefore to kill man is to deface Godâs image, and so injury is not only done to man, but also to God.â
He declaimed, âhuman life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy Godâ, adding, âeven before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his gloryâ.
ProPublica and The New Republic noted that Parker once wrote: âWhen judges donât rule in the fear of the Lord, everythingâs falling apart. The whole world is coming unglued.â
The world is coming unglued, but thatâs because of hypocrites like Trump unleashing the demons.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times