Social media can quickly and easily dredge up the past, and you don’t want to be upstaged by someone who did a superior job many years earlier.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden traveled to New London, Connecticut and gave the Coast Guard Academy’s Commencement address. Such an event is as big a moment for a new president as it is for the cadets. Biden took to social to media, writing, « I was honored to speak at the Coast Guard Academy’s Commencement today. To the class of 2021: congratulations. May God protect you all as you set out on your journeys, and may God protect all those who wear the uniform of the United States of America. » However, what might be most remembered by those cadets in attendance wasn’t Biden’s upholding of the tradition of absolving graduates of all « minor infractions, » or even the story he told of a college prank he actually committed. Rather what might have been the most memorable moment of the speech were the poor choice of words the « commander in chief » chose when describing the cadets. After attempting to poke some humor at the U.S. Navy’s expense, Biden suggested the graduates – newly minted officers of the United States Coast Guard – were a « dull class. » In his first commencement address as the nation’s commander in chief, President Biden fumbled an old joke badly, « I can only assume that you’ll enjoy educating your family about how the Coast Guard is quote ‘The hard nucleus around the Navy forms in times of war.
