And so we come to the final Friday Talking Points of President Joe Biden's term in office.

It is perhaps appropriate that the funeral of Jimmy Carter happened in the midst of Biden winding down his final weeks. Because Joe Biden -- another one-term Democratic president like Jimmy -- will likely become more appreciated as time goes by, just as Carter was.

Joe Biden had a pretty spectacular first two years in office, in terms of getting legislation passed. Granted, he had a Democratic Congress to work with and the continuing crisis of a pandemic to spur the politicians to actually act. He used both to get a sweeping agenda passed which will have an impact for years to come. But he had to grapple with two corporate-friendly Democrats in the Senate who held him back from achieving an even-more-historic agenda. If the full "Build Back Better" plan had made it past Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, then Americans would doubtlessly feel a lot differently (and better) about government's role in their economic lives.

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Watching President Joe Biden's farewell address from the Oval Office last night was rather bittersweet. For me at least, it all had a flavor of "what might have been." But in the end, Biden's promised bridge to a new generation of leadership really led nowhere.

While campaigning early in 2020, Biden appeared on a stage with three other prominent Democrats, who were at the time "expected to be considered for the vice presidential nomination" -- Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Gretchen Whitmer. Biden said during this campaign event: "Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country." While Biden never actually did explicitly promise to serve only a single term as president, many read his comments to mean exactly that -- Biden would defeat Donald Trump, run a bridging presidency, and then step aside and make way for a younger generation of Democrats to carry the torch forward.

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Hearings are now underway in the Senate on Donald Trump's various nominees to fill out his administration, but so far it has all felt like it is leading to a very foregone conclusion. American politics has gotten so tribal that Republicans are now willing to overlook just about anything for one of their own, no matter how deeply disqualifying such things would have been in the past. Trump will quite likely get almost all his picks confirmed, no matter what disturbing things exist in their past.

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Maybe it's time to bring back the concept of adversaries settling their insults with a good old-fashioned duel? That's the thought I have been having while watching the flurry of playground tantrums and unrestrained bullying spewing forth from the highest ranks of MAGA supporters. Maybe Steve Bannon and Elon Musk should just count off ten paces and take potshots at each other -- they could even make it pay-per-view and make a fortune! Well... whomever was left alive might, at any rate.

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In an extraordinary confluence of events, America mourned one former president as his body lay in state in the United States Capitol, while another former (and soon-to-be-again) president was sentenced after being found guilty of 34 felonies by a jury. Jimmy Carter had become almost the personification of decency in his post-presidential life, while Donald Trump has always been the personification of something a lot more tawdry.

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Will TikTok be banned before Donald Trump even takes office? That is the question the Supreme Court will hear tomorrow. As things stand, a law will start to shut down TikTok in this country on the 19th, unless the company divests itself from ownership and control by the Chinese government. Which isn't very likely to happen in the next ten days. But the politics of the situation have been rather convoluted, so it's hard to predict what will happen or what the fallout will be in Washington.

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Two years ago, for Presidents' Day, I wrote the following article in celebration of Jimmy Carter. At the time, he had just entered a hospice to live out his remaining days. He lasted almost two more years, reaching the impressive benchmark of turning 100 years old -- the longest any U.S. president has ever lived, in fact. And as the nation pays its respects to Carter before his final journey home to Plains, Georgia, I thought it was worth running this again. I have no idea if any other American president will ever make it to the century mark, but Carter's real legacy was not just a mark on a calendar, but the mark he made after he left office. And I have serious doubts whether any other former president will ever even get close to matching the good that Jimmy Carter did in his post-presidential career. He truly set the gold standard in that regard. His compassion for his fellow human beings was an inspiration to all, and I will always be grateful for his example of all the good a politician can still do after they leave office.

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Donald Trump's "Day One" in office is now less than two weeks away. He promised American voters a lot of action on his first day, but in the past few weeks he seems inordinately focused on some rather odd (one might say: "downright bizarre") goals. He has become a big fan of expanding America in what can only be called imperialistic fashion -- adding Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal to the American map. Today he floated a new idea, this one not a land-grab but instead of a sort of water-grab: he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America," for no particular reason (other than to annoy Mexico, one assumes).

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Today was a pretty boring day in Washington -- which is as it should be. Congress met and certified the Electoral College votes in the ceremonial finish to last year's presidential election. There were no riots, no protests, and no insurrection attempt by a brigade of sore losers. The Capitol remained peaceful throughout. In fact, the whole thing was so boring that it's really not even worth writing a whole column about it.

Instead, let's focus on what the new Congress has on its plate. With two weeks to go before Donald Trump is sworn into office again, Republicans are already eager to get his second term rolling. The Senate will begin hearings on Trump's cabinet appointees, most of which will be pretty dull and perfunctory -- but a handful of them could get quite lively indeed. Especially considering the fact that Democrats will get to question each of them publicly about anything under the sun. They'll do so to score political points, but also in an effort to convince a few worried Republicans of the candidates' unfitness for office. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, so it will take four of them rejecting any nominee to tank their chances. But most of them will wind up sailing through the process, even if one or two do get derailed.

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American politics can, at times, be cyclic in nature. One party has a defining characteristic and the other party is at the opposite end of the spectrum -- but over time the pendulum can swing, and the parties wind up reversed from their previous positions. Case in point: it wasn't that long ago that congressional Democrats were known for their fractious behavior with many different factions at loggerheads with each other, to such a point that large groups of them crossing the aisle and voting with the Republicans was a regular occurrence. Charmingly enough, it was referred to as Democrats' "cat-herding problem." Cats, as we all know, are impossible to herd, since they are all fierce individualists and resist any attempts to get them all headed in the same direction. Herding the Democratic cats was seen as a Herculean (and quite possibly impossible) task.

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