This was a sad day for Vice-President Joe Biden’s family.  No Father or Mother want to bury their children.  The Vice-President has had his share of sadness in his family with the death of his first wife and his daughter and  now his son.  It goes to show you no matter how powerful a person is, the man upstairs has the final say.

The country has to be very disappointed with the Vice-President that he would sit by and let the leader destroy our country.  Do you think the Vice-President is being punished for allowing so much pain in our country and helping to achieve this pain.  I thought that with him being in his position and older that he would help direct the leader; but, that has not happened.  Wonder if he continues to make all of the gaffes to make people think maybe he is not up to the job?  Or sometimes you are put in a position of evil and have no choice to just make the best of it until it is over.

Long after the last partisan battle has been fought over Obamacare, long after Barack Obama has settled into a comfortable post-presidency, and long after the last joke has been made about some Joe Biden verbal misstep, people will remember the moment when the always-in-control president struggled to control his emotions. They will remember the moment when president and vice president embraced in front of the altar and exchanged heartfelt kisses on the cheek. And they will remember how their hearts ached at this intimate glimpse of one family’s pain.

In an age when so many political moments are scripted, this was real. In a country whose presidents and vice presidents have rarely been close, this was genuine closeness. In an administration that prides itself on being hip, this was decidedly old-fashioned love.

But it was something more than that, something that the country has never before seen in real-time. In its raw emotion and aching poignancy, the burial Saturday of Beau Biden, son of the vice president, was a rare moment in the long history of the United States, one unlike any ever before brought to the nation through live, often moving, television coverage.

As a nation, we don’t normally play witness to such personal grief on the part of our leaders. Earlier generations followed by telegraph and grieved when Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln lost their 12-year-old son Willie to typhoid fever in 1862. They devoured the newspapers and wept when Presidents John Tyler and Woodrow Wilson lost wives Letitia and Ellen in 1842 and 1914. And they stay tuned to their radios and mourned the tragic denouement of President Calvin Coolidge’s bedside vigil when 16-year-old Calvin Jr., succumbed from blood poisoning in 1924.

President Barack Obama attends funeral services for Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Beau Biden, Saturday, June 6, 2015, at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Wilmington, Del.  But here, on Saturday, was a family’s grief playing out on live television from inside St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Wilmington. From the first strains of the bagpipes outside the church, something was different. It was clear that this was not the usual political funeral, one where many of the participants were following a well-read script. This was not the funeral of an elderly party veteran, one whose career had played out over many decades.

This was saying goodbye to a young man whose family was youthful and potential seemed unlimited, someone who very well could have ended up surpassing his father’s success. The grief was compounded by the universal truth that parents are not supposed to bury their children. That had not happened for any president or vice president since President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy buried their newborn son Patrick Bouvier in 1963. Before that, it had not happened since Calvin Coolidge Jr. developed a blister playing tennis that led to his death four decades earlier.

Almost as rare for Americans today are signs of emotion from their famously unflappable president. Obama struggled to get through his heartfelt eulogy at St. Anthony’s. For only the third time in memory, he lost the battle to contain his emotions. The first came just hours before the 2008 election when his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died at age 86. Tears streamed down his face as he talked about her at a campaign rally at the University of North Carolina.

Four years later, he would again shed tears in public. That came at the White House when he tried to talk about the shootings at Newtown, Conn., that had claimed 18 children among the 27 victims.  (He used this crisis to try to take the guns away from the American people.)

The funeral at St. Anthony’s was another highly personal moment for the president. White House aides have often tried to persuade reporters that this president and this vice president have a close bond. Just as often, reporters have voiced skepticism, aware of a two-century history of relationships ranging from open enmity to cool indifference between the men in the White House and their vice presidents. But more than six years into the presidency, it may be time to accept the claims as accurate. Even when Biden has misspoken or jumped the gun on positions, aides insist Obama harbored no anger at the vice president. “That’s just Joe being Joe,” they often say. “It’s part of who he is.”

They always appreciated Biden’s loyalty and humanity. Saturday was a chance for the president to return that embrace. How he did it will be hard to forget.

We all know Obama’s style and performances to grab the hearts of people –  so was this style and performance to tug on the hearts of the American people or was this genuine emotions.  Hard to say!  Remember, Obama rode the wave of emotion and mob enthusiasm into office – don’t let a crisis go to waste are his famous last words.

In the end, condolences go the Biden family!

But it looks like the main street media, instead of sticking to the Biden family, used this tragedy to not let a crisis go to waste and used this crisis to beef up Obama’s sagging poll numbers – just like they did during his election.  With the country in the depths of pain and suffering themselves – the sympathy for this leader has left the stage and he is all alone on that pedestal of life.  For the country to give the first black man the stage and for him to turn around and stab the America people in the back is a sad state of affairs.

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