Few acts are more mundane that checking one’s watch. I used to do that a lot. Now I check my phone. My, how technology advances. But before I get distracted by my phone again, my point is that people checking their watches is hardly the stuff of history.
Or is it?
No, I cannot think of a time when someone checking their watch changed the course of history . . . yet. But I can think of watch checks that revealed a lot about history before it was history.
October 15th, 1992
During the Second Presidential Debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, President George H. W. Bush checked his watch at the beginning of a question of how the recession affected him. That told more about him and about his re-election campaign than about what time it was, namely:
1. His disinterest in debating and campaigning, that in contrast with Bill Clinton, who clearly enjoyed it. The mercurial Ross Perot also enjoyed barnstorming on a good day. Bush wanted it to be over with. He admitted as much:
Bush later suggested that his gesture may, in fact, have revealed something about his discomfort with the debate. "Was I glad when the damn thing was over?" he said to PBS Newshour anchor Jim Lehrer. "Yeah."
It would be very much over soon. Bush’s disinterest while Clinton oozed empathy assisted in that.
2. His sense of superiority and overconfidence. He was a Bush after all. He was better than that blowhard Perot and that young playboy Governor of Arkansas, of all states.
It was not just the President who felt that way. His campaign was hampered by overconfidence that surely he would not lose to Bill Clinton of all people. Heck, the only reason Clinton got the Democrat nomination was because bigger names did not want to run against Bush. Adding to the misplaced confidence was that Republicans had won the last three presidential elections and four of the last five.
So it wasn’t just Bush who was ready to get the campaign done with and won. And it wasn’t just this then Republican Precinct Chairman who did not see the result coming.
March 30/31st, 2013
Elected earlier that month, Pope Francis was in the Vatican presiding over his first Easter Vigil as Pope. For those unfamiliar with Easter Vigils, they are not services to be done with in less than an hour so one can rush home or to the pub. The Easter Vigil on Easter Eve is the most solemn occasion of the church year for many traditional Christians. At their best, they are evocative, glorious, and definitely not rushed. One of the most memorable services I’ve ever attended was an Easter Vigil at St. Matthias Anglican Dallas in 2005; it lasted well over two hours, and I would not have it a minute shorter.
But Pope Francis apparently did not feel that way about his first Easter Vigil as Pope. Bishop of Rome only for days, he had already acted to shorten the service. But it wasn’t short enough apparently. During the service, he checked his watch, just as he checked his watch during his installation service on March 19th.
Twenty years older and somewhat wiser, I knew immediately there was something profoundly wrong with Francis long before many whom I respect caught on.
Why? Unless one is hinting to an overly loquacious preacher to wind his sermon up, a priest just does not look at his watch during a service. It’s not in the rubrics; it doesn’t have to be. It sends the wrong message to the congregation and to God as well. For a pope to check his watch during one of the more solemn services of the year . . . . It was unthinkable . . . before Francis.
Thus in the first month of his pontificate, those with eyes to see could already see Francis was a man of impious priorities who had little respect for the liturgy, for the need of solemn and traditional celebrations of even the Resurrection of our Lord.
The slow motion disaster of the pontificate of Francis should not have afterward surprised anyone, particularly his attempted vandalism of the Lord’s Prayer and his attacks on the traditional Latin Mass. Early on, his watch check foretold his attacks on catholic worship.
Sunday August 29th, 2021
Joe Biden stands at Dover Air Force Base to receive the bodies of 13 service people killed in the Kabul bombing, an attack enabled by the shambles of his withdrawal from Afghanistan. As he ends a salute, he quickly checks his watch. It was so quick that perhaps he caught himself, realizing how wrong that was. But he checked his watch nonetheless. (And some reports have him checking his watch additional times during the ceremony.)
At this point, it is unclear just what this watch check tells. Perhaps it tells that Biden’s cognitive decline is worse than most think. One system of dementia is socially inappropriate behavior. But I am not his doctor, and it would be wrong for me to presume that is what is happening.
Perhaps he did not want to be there at Dover AFB and thought he had better things to do. He surely wants to move on from his Afghanistan disaster. Perhaps he was so detached from reality, he did not realize the solemnity of his role.
It is hard to think that his watch check revealed shear callousness toward the fallen soldiers and their families. But he has already greatly endangered Americans and allied Afghans. How much of that disaster is from incompetence and how much from callousness, we do not know.
In any case, what Biden’s watch check this past Sunday reveals is not good.
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So the trivial act of checking one’s watch revealed much about these three men and their times, although exactly what was revealed in Biden’s case is not yet clear. Did the checks also have consequences?
In the elder Bush’s case, probably not. Yes, it was part of his lackluster debate in his lackluster campaign. But it was the campaign and the recession and perhaps Ross Perot that brought about his defeat, not a watch check.
In Pope Francis’ case, it had virtually no consequences whatsoever before men. Just about everyone was too eager to think hopefully about the new Pope. The consequences before God are another matter best left to Him.
I doubt it will have lasting consequences for Biden either. But I see similarities with Bush’s watch check in that it reveals traits that will have political consequences. Bush’s disdain for actual campaigning, partly revealed by his watch check, assisted his defeat. Whatever the mix of incompetence and darkness revealed by Biden’s watch check, that mix may and should lead to the downfall of his presidency as well.
There is a significant difference with Biden’s watch check. Bush’s check, though revealing undesirable traits, was not awful or disgusting. Biden’s watch check is disgusting and adding to widespread disgust with him – as it should.
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