At one bloody point in the movie "Gladiator" Maximus turns to the baying crowd in the amphitheater and loudly asks "are you not entertained?" It's not a question. It's more of a challenge, indeed an accusation.
Joe Biden, it could be argued, never posed the question during his presidency, neither privately nor publicly. Had he done so he might have taken a different route along the way to what ended up being, for him, a premature retirement.
No, unlike Maximus, Biden never found himself courting the crowd. He tried hard enough to make life easier for those gazing at him from the political amphitheater. But he never got out and about enough to proclaim his efforts and invite loud and clear cut answers.
Those around him seemingly chose to keep him at arms length from the media and, as a result, the great mass of voters.
The man was confined. He was not allowed, or didn't allow himself, the breathing space to shout and wave his arms, things that his successor does like some people eat breakfast cereal.
And so Biden, a decent man, a decent enough president who managed to achieve decent enough policy goals in his four year term, left the White House with a basement level approval rating.
For the average voter, four years of Biden produced fewer headlines than two weeks of Donald Trump. Go figure!
Trump, of course, is a born entertainer. He has an unerring ability to generate headlines and secure multiples of them on a single subject.
And he's all over the map to the point that it's virtually impossible to pin him down on a given subject. Ask him about tariffs and he will talk about Greenland, having his mugshot chiseled into Mount Rushmore, or maybe even changing the "Gulf of America" to the Gulf of Trump. Now there's an idea.
Trump's is a presidency, thus far, on steroids. And if what we have seen in just two weeks is what we're going to get for four years, America could well be unrecognizable when the 2028 presidential contest rolls around.
So, we might ask ourselves, have we moved beyond a point in U.S. political life when stolid, albeit ultimately serious policy ideas, simply don't cut the mustard with voters anymore? Is it, instead, all about a candidate's ability for distracting by way of entertaining?
Will the next president secure a winning majority by threatening to seize Monte Carlo or Bora Bora, desirable places both, and a lot warmer than Greenland?
We have already heard about a possible bid for a third Trump term. One Republican member of Congress is formally proposing the idea. All of a sudden the idea of being too old for the presidency at 82 is flying out of some windows.
In the face of all this you would need a super computer to tot up all the problems facing the Democrats who, in the opening days of Trump Two, have looked like cave dwellers throwing stones at invading aliens from outer space.
In another time you might have said, well, politics is politics, everything turns, you lose then later you win. But there is a sense now that something has changed in the business of the republic that might not be reversible.
And that something might be politics itself and a future in which he (and for the foreseeable future probably only a he) who shouts loudest and entertains better comes out the winner in the battle for the Oval Office.
Never mind the price of eggs. Do you want to be entertained?
All this poses a serious challenge to politicians in both parties who actually take political policy seriously. But it poses a particular challenge for the Democrats. Do they stick with familiar roads to power, or do they imagine new ones?
Do they come up with a decent candidate saying decent things for the 2028 presidential election? Or do they find a Maximus, sword in hand and ready to pose a question to voters that's not really a question at all.
