I wrote last year that Donald Trump had proven to be one of the most consequential presidents in United States history.

His fall was as stunning as his rise. If he had risen to what happened to America in February of 2020, he might have been one of the greatest Presidents.

But he threw it all away, consumed by his own unacknowledged sickness. He was his own Greek Tragedy. Hubris ate him alive.

I guess I was only half right about the consequential presidency.

The 365 days between the panicked collapse of our offices and schools and restaurants last year and Joe Biden’s speech Thursday night may kick off the most consequential year in American history.

Biden’s American Rescue Plan is about much more than the pandemic. It’s about returning to the idea that government can help working people, the poor, and the vulnerable when they get into trouble.

Trump, as shocking and jarring as he is, proved to be the warm-up act, not the main event. Now comes real change, not the promise of it.

Joe Biden and I never really crossed paths emotionally, as a politician and a voter sometimes do. In the age of labels, I reject all of them; none really fits me.

Biden was never someone who excited or impressed me, nor did I pay much attention to him.

I never would have voted for him in normal times. I thought we needed something else.

I felt in my bones the country was ready for a woman president. So much for my bones. Biden seemed a nice enough guy, but also just another tired old Democratic functionary.

It was hard to get excited about him.

Even though we fear the future, history has its own ideas about things, and Joe Biden met history. They became friends and decided to work with one another. They met at just the right time.

Politics is curious that way; it has a way of finding the right people at the right time. Sometimes our greatest leaders are people of no great consequence in their ordinary lives but earth-shattering for their surprising impact on our world.

In his first 50 days in office, Biden has opened my eyes to a new way of looking at politics and fate.

I can see the light; I can feel it: a softening, an easing, sights and deep breaths. We whined and moaned and trembled all last year. Perhaps it’s time for hope and maybe even celebration.

Thursday, Joe Biden kicked off the celebration of the end of the pandemic.

A lot of this is luck.

A lot of Trump people worked very hard to get those vaccines underway. But Trump blew that opportunity as well. He will be remembered for recommending bleach and UV light instead of vaccines.

But Biden couldn’t have asked for a better contrast than the one we see between the paralyzed and rapidly sinking Republican Party and the grandpa we needed asking Americans to help him, not support him or hate him.

In the age of rabid polarization, this is new. He just pretends his critics are not really there, so, in many ways, they aren’t. We are all sick of that.

If there was a God, he sent Biden to highlight what Donald Trump is and was and was not and is not. Even now, Trump and his friends spout almost nothing but hate, self-aggrandizement, middle-school resentment, and jeering.

They can’t stop talking about Dr. Seuss when everyone else is thinking about other things. When people are closeted in their homes for a year, losing their jobs, struggling to cope with their children suddenly at home, Dr. Seuss is not at the top of their list of concerns.

Politics 101. It is telling that the Republicans have nothing else.

It is great when the government gives you something, and Biden’s rescue plan has some nice stuff for almost everyone. Even the poor and the needy.

He is setting up a structure to distribute vaccines to everyone who wants one and asking us to think of July 4th as a good date for normalcy and celebration. Talk about patriotism, Biden is stealing it back from the shitheads.

He is devoid of bombast, chest-thumping, and cruelty.

He is seeking to revolutionize government support for the needy and the vulnerable.

Every time he gives a speech, Trump and Trumpism get a little smaller.

Both shrink. It will take time, especially if people maintain the discipline to ignore them

Trump looks ridiculous down there in his garish palace in Palm Beach, getting his tanning rays and hairdos every morning, golfing, and getting his ass kissed several times a day.

The man is full of nasty and devoid of heart. That can’t work in a country like ours, not for long.

He is still the Prince of Darkness, spouting hatred in press releases instead of tweets, demanding credit for his bumbling and callous response to Covid-19. I’m not sure anyone is listening now.

Back in Washington, Joe Biden bringing some light into our darkened world.

He’s reminding us that government can work, can be necessary, can help. He’s guiding us towards hopefulness. We can see the end; we can see a new beginning.

I guess it took an ordinary person, a humble person, perhaps a person of genuine faith to do it. Almost all of my hate mail is gone, quiet, perhaps stunned.

All those years of watching real power but not having it. His fantasies seem to have come true.

More and more, the Republicans seem to be cranky and self-absorbed old white men or old white men wannabees, jeering from the sidelines like middle-schoolers at a football game or on a park bench in front of City Hall.

They are trapped in Trumpland, a place no sane or rational person really wants to live.

It has really come down to pissed-off Christian white men hanging on against the rest of the world. That can’t work, not for long. That’s what Donald Trump and his supporters just don’t get.

Donald Trump gave Biden an extraordinary gift as he left office, spouting lies and fomenting insurrection. He left behind a wretched mess, pandemic, economic, political, and spiritual.

At first, Biden looked good just by getting up in the morning. I was more relieved than impressed. Now I’m impressed.

I don’t care if he never accomplishes one more thing. He’s done plenty.

It’s very different. He is what we needed. He is what we wanted without seeing it or knowing it. He is the man of the moment.

I say that with no great joy, our political world is out of balance without them. For them, Donald Trump is just a disaster that keeps on giving.

Biden surprises me by having some genius for striking the right note. He isn’t the smartest leader we’ve ever had, but he is the most empathetic and intuitive.

In his speech, says the Washington Post, “He needed to acknowledge the loss of more than 529,000 lives to the coronavirus pandemic and the accompanying economic suffering while offering a sense of optimism that the future can and will be brighter.”

And that’s what he did.

I think it’s time to cheer for this man; I commit myself to support what he is doing. That is a lift for me.

For the first time in decades, he is actually helping the poor, supporting unions, thinking of working people who have children, sensing, as Franklin Roosevelt did, that government has great power to lift people, reassure them, give them hope, and promise.

Instead of bragging and saying “I alone can do it,” he says with humility that he can only succeed with the help of others.”

Biden, I see, is more than the opposite of  Trump, who has begun the long fade into the obscurity and accountability he has so long deserved. As was evident, his followers of good faith have been misled and betrayed.

He was not good for them. They will figure it out. They are not as dumb as they sometimes would like to appear.

Biden has already done more for working people in two months than Trump did in four years. Whether they know it or not or accept it, it is good to see.

We want to be a moral nation again, a force for good in the world.

But Biden is transcending comparisons with the now ghostly Trump. “I need you, the American people,” he said last night, “I need you. I need every American to do their part.”

That was a line straight from the heart and to the heart. A lot of people can’t feel that, a lot of people can. That’s how revolutions really begin, not with big trucks and flags.

Biden is sailing well over the nasty and draining he-said-she-said partisanship that has crippled Congress and depressed so much of our country.

By ignoring Trump, he is making him invisible. It took a 79-year-old hack politician to figure that out.

Biden calls us to a gentler, kinder country.  So far, people like it.

He has more promise right now than Barack Obama or Bill Clinton.

He is everyman; he is the working man and woman; he is simple enough to relate to people who are wary of smart and articulate leaders who accomplish little and talk right over their heads.

Something needed to change. Something has changed. We had a president who lost his job because he couldn’t grasp the enormity of what he faced and repeatedly denied.

He is followed by a very different President who understands that his legacy depends almost entirely on bringing this catastrophe to a swift and successful conclusion.

At first, I accepted Biden; I didn’t jump up and down for joy. Now I like him a lot, and I’m not reluctant or shy to say it.

I am surprised. I am impressed. I am relieved.

Can’t you feel it? It’s okay to get excited. You’ve earned it.

I think of all the names Biden has been called – thief, senile, radical – and I wonder at how he sails right over it, like a sailboat heading out to sea in the wind.

Good for him. Good for us. Biden is bringing back the light and may end up on those great presidents lists that have almost lost their meaning in recent years.