This essay proves, beyond doubt, that in that locked bottom drawer of Mr. Luce’s desk is a novel he’s been working on for years. Now, he worked diligently, in his younger years on that pet project, but the years and his career have consigned that nearly completed project, to that bottom drawer.

But Mr. Luce redeems his ambition with his fictive creation of Joe Biden’s letter to the president. Although Mr. Biden is,to be frank, a career politician, once a Liberal, who like most Democrats ‘evolved’ into a Neo-Liberal. But Mr. Biden had a talent of putting his foot in mouth, in his extemporaneous remarks, unlike Reagan he didn’t have a script writer and a staff that kept him ‘on message’. Some might call Biden an amenable political hack, a V.P. with a staff to control his need to opine on pressing political issues. Mr. Luce’s essays captures the politically managed ‘anguish’ of Biden, and its focus on the  Trump political phenomenon, an imagined Biden as conscience of a nation doesn’t quite ring true.

Political Reporter

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7c69dc5e-a020-11e5-beba-5e33e2b79e46.html#axzz3uJ2FP32v