Monthly Archives: July 2024

Joe Biden will be remembered as a great American president

This op-ed was published by The National on July 22, 2024

Political heroism is typically framed in terms of the acquisition and retention of power. But the US has a long tradition of celebrating, even venerating, those who have voluntarily given up power to promote the general welfare.

President Joe Biden – who announced on Sunday that, in the interests of the party and the country, he is surrendering the Democratic presidential nomination, which he has earned in the primaries and fully controls – is the latest heir to that noble tradition.

From the founding of the Republic, stepping aside and knowing when to say goodbye has been the quintessence of American political virtue.

Towards the end of the American rebellion, King George III reportedly asked a royal artist who was painting him what George Washington would do if the colonists achieved independence. The artist, a subject from the American colonies, replied that, upon victory, Washington would probably retire to a private situation. His Majesty replied: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

 

On December 23, 1783, Washington did just that. He resigned his commission to the Continental Congress and returned to his plantation (and slaves) at Mount Vernon.

He repeated this gesture in 1796, when he declined to run for president a third time, establishing the two-term, eight-year, norm that was later written into the Constitution. In 1800, his successor, John Adams, fully routinised and normalized the peaceful transfer of power by accepting his defeat at the hands of Thomas Jefferson and stepping aside.

These ethic-establishing acts drew heavily on the almost-entirely classical education of the American founders, with Roman general Cincinnatus (who, legend holds, gave up power to return to his farm) regarded as one of the greatest exemplars of political virtue.

Mr. Biden’s genuinely grand gesture of stepping back from power resonates with many aspects of the founding and central tropes of American politics and civic religion. Both Mr. Biden and the Democrats have salvaged their reputations, and even carved out a monumental set of distinctions with former US president and convicted felon Donald Trump and his cult-like Republican Party.

It will be said that Mr. Biden was hounded off the ticket by Democratic elites, but that’s false. Many party leaders told him bluntly that he probably couldn’t win and might even do damage to Democratic chances for the House and Senate. Still, they could do nothing but try to convince him to go willingly.

Not easy. The President had earned his delegates through the primaries, and he was not going to simply relinquish them because other people at that moment thought he should.

If he cared only about himself, Mr. Biden would have remained the Democratic nominee. Instead, he was rationally convinced by his friends, and possibly family, that no matter how painful stepping aside might be, it was essential to maximize the chances of beating Mr. Trump in November.

They might as well have asked him to chop off his left hand with a dull and rusty cleaver.

For a scrappy fighter like Mr. Biden, who has been counted out throughout his career only to bounce back with unexpected potency – eventually leading to a historically significant first presidential term – stepping aside is anathema. But his intermittent frailty is deteriorating too quickly and publicly to sustain electoral viability at this exceptional, historically significant political crossroads.

It’s extremely unlikely that Mr. Biden was mainly seeking to proactively defend his own legacy and reputation, although that would be a typical argument for embracing acts of courageous political virtue. It’s much more likely that he primarily responded to patriotism and arguments that the last, best and most imperative opportunity to defeat Mr. Trump and everything he represents cannot be the subject of an experiment regarding ageing during presidential campaigns.

Over the past few weeks, Mr. Biden was no doubt reassuring himself that, of course, there was no reason to think he was going to lose badly to Mr. Trump. The Democrats had many advantages. He been written off before and generally bounced back. Stepping down went against everything else he believes in, but polling and anecdotal data ultimately painted a grim enough picture that he was willing to swallow his pride, ambitions, ego, hopes and dreams in the national interest.

What a staggering contrast to Mr. Trump. Rather than accepting his decisive defeat in the superbly run and entirely clean 2020 election, he sought by numerous extra-constitutional and allegedly unlawful schemes to overturn the result. When none of that worked, he incited and unleashed an angry, violent mob on the Capitol building in an effort to stop ratification of the election results and intimidate members of Congress and, especially, the vice president.

Mr. Biden’s position starkly contrasts with Mr. Trump’s remarks to his then-chief of staff, Gen John Kelly, that fallen US soldiers were “suckers and losers”. “I don’t understand it,” he reportedly muttered, shaking his head, “what was in it for them?”

Similarly, the Democratic Party has, after a few alarming weeks, re-established itself as firmly rooted in objective reality and disinclined, ultimately, to attempt a colossal gaslighting campaign to obscure and deny the established and objectively verified flaws of their candidate.

In short, Mr. Biden did what Mr. Trump never would: put others – the party and country – above his own interests. And the Democratic Party did what the Republican Party has organized itself to passionately avoid and reject: acknowledge the flaws of their beloved presumptive nominee, prevail upon him to act with the utmost selflessness and not run for president, and just tell the truth.

Whoever the Democrats nominate, this election will be about more than traditional American democracy versus populist illiberalism. It will also be between a politics based on the real world versus last week’s Republican national convention.

Far beyond the most extreme precedent, the RNC was steeped in phoniness, humbug and an undisguised, unabashed spectacle of simulacra – including a “professional wrestler” pretending in detail to be a champion of legitimate sporting contests.

Mr. Biden overwhelmingly won the Democratic primaries. The nomination legitimately belongs to him. But he’s stepping aside because it’s the right thing to do. That is among the most noble and patriotic acts in American history.

Mr. Biden will be remembered as a truly great president and great American.

The US Supreme Court’s reputation is tarnished not without reason

This op-ed was published by The National on June 19, 2024

For several years, I have been explaining in these pages that the Supreme Court is the most corrupt major US national institution. The religious extremism in the court’s majority has now been compounded by levels of self-dealing by Justice Clarence Thomas warranting an unprecedented Justice Department criminal investigation. The whole judicial branch of government is thus in utter crisis.

On the ideological side, Mr. Thomas recently ruled for the court that “bump stock” kits don’t convert semi-automatic weapons into machineguns, when that’s all that they are for. The court is in the process of scandalously legalizing the practically unregulated ownership of fully automatic assault rifles designed only to kill many people efficiently.

Mr. Thomas’s noted extremism is being outdone by Justice Samuel Alito.

First, it was revealed that an upside down US flag was flown at his home shortly after the January 6 insurgency. That shocking misuse of the flag was widely associated with the pro-Trump insurgents seeking to abolish US democracy.

This ought to be grounds for resignation. But Mr. Alito has blamed his wife, insisting “I am not fond of flying flags”, but she is.

Even if he’s telling the truth, he has certainly surpassed grounds for recusal on 2020 election-related cases. But he refuses to consider recusing himself, even though any reasonable person would have rational grounds to doubt his impartiality in such cases – which is the standard.

Unfortunately, unlike all other courts in the country, the Supreme Court is effectively immune from any ethics enforcement, and the extremist right-wing majority is taking heavy advantage of that to continue unheard-of ideological and financial shenanigans.

Mr Alito was audio taped by a journalist posing as a conservative supporter – a distasteful and arguably unethical tactic – enthusiastically agreeing that it was time for Americans to return to “godliness”, in civic life.

The US, however, is not a Christian or “godly” country but one that upholds the neutrality of government on religious beliefs. This is clearly illustrated by the US Constitution itself, in the notes on its composing convention by founding American statesman James Madison, and in some of the young republic’s earliest treaties – most notably the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, composed under George Washington and ratified under John Adams, the second US president.

The US Supreme Court’s current five-vote radical religious majority – all Catholic extremists – rejects this proud tradition, precisely as Mr. Alito confirmed to his unscrupulous interlocutor. The questionable tactics of a self-appointed investigator is of little national significance. But the stated radicalism, fully borne out by his other comments in the past and, especially, rulings coming from him and his four religiously extremist colleagues, is deeply alarming.

The attack on reproductive freedom, which appears poised to extend itself at the national level to sweeping restrictions, if not outright prohibitions, on contraception and in vitro fertilization (as in Alabama, whose Supreme Court Chief Justice invoked God’s will and religious dogma as his main argument in a recent ruling, pushing hard in that direction), is plainly based entirely on religious sentiments and not law.

The five Catholic extremists who stripped American women of this long-standing constitutional right were plainly motivated by their own personal spiritual convictions, which ought to have no place in constitutional jurisprudence. This is faith-based dogma, not constitutional law.

Mr. Thomas has even written that the court ought to revisit all privacy-based rulings from the past half-century that derived from the original reproductive rights ruling, Roe V Wade. This puts into question all manner of laws pertaining to LGBTQ Americans, in addition to a range of restrictions on government-enforced religious observance in schools and elsewhere, and even the invalidity of laws prohibiting interracial marriages (such as Mr. Thomas’s own).

Mr. Thomas has long cast a pall of financial misdeeds over the court with his history of unreported “gifts” from wealthy right-wing benefactors with broad-ranging stakes in any number of existing and potential cases. It has been recently revealed that over the past 20 years Mr. Thomas received at least 103 “gifts” valued at more than $2.4 million, mostly in the form of luxury vacations, loans that may or may not have been repaid, and other largesse.

That is not strictly speaking illegal, but failing to report such “gifts” is, since the public has a right to know about them. Mr. Thomas has accumulated a vast track record of “overlooking” to report as required huge amounts of money from very ideological wealthy right-wing activists. And, like Mr. Alito, Mr. Thomas has refused to recuse himself from 2020 election-related cases, even though his wife, the Republican activist Ginni, was a well-connected and ardent proponent of any number of schemes to prevent Mr. Biden from duly taking office despite his election victory.

Both men insist that they are not their wives, which is true, that they never discuss such matters with their wives, which is highly unconvincing, and that there is no basis for recusal. The opposite is true.

Both Mr. Alito and Mr. Thomas have no business ruling on any case even remotely related to the outcome of 2020 election by the standards that would be enforced on any other judge in the country. Mr. Thomas’s pattern of concealing almost $2.5 million in undisclosed gifts from wealthy benefactors is so extensive and prolonged it warrants a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. This is not a matter of a few oversights. It is a pattern of corruption and self-dealing that calls into question the integrity of the court and the judicial system.

Not since before the Second World War has the US been confronted with a highly aggressive and extremist court majority that’s badly out of step with the national viewpoint, and, even more disturbingly, at least one justice who may well have crossed the line into outright corrupt criminality.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a relatively moderate conservative who is said to be focused on the institutional health and legacy of the court he leads, has long since lost control of it and doesn’t seem to have been doing much to stanch the bleeding.

What was patently true years ago is now far more obvious: the Supreme Court appears to have emerged as simultaneously the most extreme and the most corrupt major national institution. For the US, that’s a historic disaster.

With Trump riding new momentum, Biden will need to move quickly

This op-ed was published by The National on July 16, 2024

The only good news for the Democrats is that this year’s presidential election is being held in November and not tomorrow. US President Joe Biden is stubbornly pressing forward with his candidacy despite continuing doubts about his acuity and vigour. Meanwhile, the presumptive Republican nominee, former president and convicted felon Donald Trump, has pocketed a set of shocking and largely unanticipated victories.

The US Supreme Court ruled that, contrary to all precedent, the plain language of the Constitution and stated intentions of its framers, plus simple common sense, both current and former presidents are broadly shielded from criminal prosecution, or even investigation, for any act that falls within the “outer perimeters” of their official duties. That’s not everything, but it’s awfully close.

The appalling ruling jeopardises much, though not all, of the federal case regarding Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result. But it seems more designed to free his hand in a potential second term.

No president before Mr. Trump, with the exception of Richard Nixon, required or sought extensive executive criminal immunity, because they didn’t commit egregious, self-serving crimes. This ruling seems designed to protect an exceptionally lawless president because it anticipates the return of just such a figure from their own Republican partisan camp.

If effectively freeing Mr. Trump from the rule of law in preparation for a second term wasn’t bad enough, Florida federal judge Aileen Cannon invalidated the entire case wherein he has no plausible defence for having purloined hundreds of top-secret government documents, refused to return them, and hid them from the FBI and even his own lawyers.

She ruled that special prosecutor Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed, a baffling claim already essentially rejected by many courts, including the Supreme Court. She will almost certainly be yet again roundly and derisively overturned by appellate courts, but long after the election. If Mr Trump wins, the case goes away. If not, she will probably be overruled and replaced on the grounds of palpable bias and gross incompetence.

Mr Trump even narrowly survived an appalling assassination attempt, which left him slightly bloodied but also framed one of the most potent political photographs in US history.

It depicts him bleeding for his people and cause, punching his fist into the air in defiance. Amid an array of red, white and blue, waving US flags, and security officials, he effectively signalled bravery, power and authority. It is his core appeal to his supporters concentrated with astonishing graphic precision in a single arresting image.

That photo alone won’t return him to power. But Mr. Trump isn’t just incredibly lucky to have survived the heinous attack. Instead of being badly wounded or killed, he emerged as the central figure in one of the most potentially inspiring and impressive images in recent memory.

Mr. Biden by contrast continues to struggle in the polls, in which Mr. Trump seems to have developed a small national lead that’s more pronounced in some key swing states. Many Democrats fear it’s going to be very difficult, if not impossible, for Mr. Biden to demonstrate his own vigor and valor, avoid further senior meltdowns as during last month’s debate, and eventually win.

All this has left the Democrats petrified of the next shoe to drop. Mr. Trump is getting unexpected and largely unearned great news from all directions, although being shot by a crazed assassin is surely a horrible experience.

Even the most cynical legal observers thought the two recent rulings beyond implausible. And as Mr Trump boasts about divine intervention, and seems even more messianic to the faithful now gathered at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, many Democrats see little hope and are bracing for the next brutal blow.

Mr. Trump has selected Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate. This decision could prove a mistake, as it doubles down on the Trump-inflected extremism that Mr. Vance used to denounce and ridicule but now passionately promotes.

Mr Trump might have better strengthened his hand by choosing a woman or a more traditional Republican such as Florida Senator Marco Rubio. But he can rest assured that Mr Vance, unlike former vice president Mike Pence, would have tried to use non-existent vice-presidential powers on January 6, 2021 to try to overturn the election results – because Mr Vance has repeatedly said so.

With several months to go, the Democrats still have time to reverse the momentum, especially since polling still shows a close race.

But they have little to work with. They’re more anxious about another pronounced senior moment from Mr Biden than excited by him. He must do something highly significant to change the emerging equation – or allow Vice President Kamala Harris to inherit the nomination. Theoretically, he could do this any time before the election, citing ill health. But the longer it takes, the riskier that gambit becomes.

After the shooting, both candidates called for calm and unity.

But Mr Trump, in particular, is already back on the extreme rhetorical warpath. He can benefit from surviving the attack with defiance, but risks being further associated with violence and chaos.

Mr Biden will seek to reinforce his 2020 election pitch that he is the voice of calm, regular order, non-violent and centrist politics, and the antidote to polarisation and extremism.

He can cite an extensive record of bipartisan legislative achievements, greatly overshadowing Mr Trump’s legislation, which was mainly a huge tax cut for the wealthy. But the President faces accusations that he failed to unite or calm anyone and even contributed to the polarisation that led to the shooting.

Last week, Mr Biden started emphasising an aggressively populist economic agenda. The contrast is potentially powerful: he wants to tax the rich, Mr Trump wants to tax the poor; he wants to create more jobs, Mr Trump wants more tariffs; he wants to invest more in society and human capital, Mr Trump wants to cut social services and public investments.

The Democrats planned to ensure that the election is effectively a referendum on Mr Trump’s felonious character. It still can be.

Indeed, the news cycle is all about him. But it’s almost all good news for the former president and terrible for the paralyzed, bewildered and rudderless Democrats. They urgently need something dramatic to revive their faith and hope, and change the emerging election narrative and momentum before it’s too late.

Kamala Harris should replace Biden and take on Trump

This op-ed was published by The National on July 10, 2024

The American presidency invests a tremendous amount of decision-making power in the hands of a single person. Presidential power steadily accumulated throughout the 20th century, and has recently been supercharged by a disastrous Supreme Court ruling that has created, out of whole cloth, wide-ranging immunity from prosecution for sitting and former presidents. Now the crisis gripping the Democratic Party has revealed yet another way in which, in the US system, one person can hold all the cards.

US President Joe Biden and most Democrats were quietly confident that as Americans re-engaged with former president Donald Trump, they would remember what they deeply disliked about him. When Mr Trump was convicted on all 34 felony charges in the adult film actress hush money case, Democrats became even more convinced that they had excellent chances for the White House, the House, and even the Senate.

However, after Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance, their election plan appears shattered. While few elected Democrats have openly called for Mr. Biden to step aside, panic in the party is widespread.

The liberal press is virtually unanimous that Mr. Biden should make way for someone younger. Some even frame the conundrum as when and how, but not if, he will go.

The main worry is that his evident aging-related decline – which was already concerning voters before the debate – had now effectively balanced out Mr. Trump’s character as the key distinction. Swing voters will no longer be choosing between a convicted felon, adjudicated sexual abuser and serial fraudster, versus a president who has disappointed many Americans with inflation, high interest rates and similar perceived “kitchen table” policy failures. Instead, it will be between that same convicted felon and a president many Americans now fear may not be robust enough to campaign or govern effectively.

Alarmed Democrats doubt they can make the election a referendum on the conduct and character of Mr Trump, as they intended, when it may be also and even as much a referendum on Mr Biden’s perceived ability to perform for the next four years.

The US President, however, is dismissively insisting that only “God Almighty” can stop him from running and winning. He unconvincingly insists that polls are simply wrong. The voters, he says, have shown they will stand with him and want him to keep running.

Mr Biden’s jarring confidence comes from a career of being written off, only to bounce back. That certainly happened when he came from nowhere to win the South Carolina primary in 2020 and seize control of the Democratic nomination. He’s clearly relishing the opportunity to once again defy the odds and prognosticators, and create a “comeback kid” narrative of perseverance and ultimate victory in the face of daunting adversity.

Only Mr Biden’s opinion ultimately counts. In the primaries he won virtually all of the committed delegates to the upcoming Democratic convention – or an earlier vote on August 5 which has been scheduled to officially select the candidate earlier because of an election law in Ohio – and unless he releases those delegates, they are bound to him. There is nothing anyone else can do about it.

Mr Biden insists he will stay. Even if they wanted to, other Democrats cannot push him aside, no matter how alarmed they may be. So unless something dramatic happens, Mr Biden will apparently stay the course.

Post debate, Biden’s Democrats don’t look quite so different from Trump’s Republicans

This op-ed was published by The National on July 1, 2024

My reaction to the appalling debate between US President Joe Biden and former president and convicted felon Donald Trump on Thursday was primarily anger. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says he wept. Many reported feeling panic or despair.

But on the night, and even more since, I remain profoundly angry at, and disappointed by, a Democratic Party that has proven itself far more like the Trump-era Republicans than I imagined.

The differences remain staggering. The Republicans are morphing into a virtual personality cult that is openly and aggressively hostile to democracy and the US constitutional order. It is shot through with racism, extreme personal and unheard-of institutional corruption, and both real and feigned radical Christian fundamentalism.

The Republicans still pose a range of dangers that the Democrats simply don’t. One of the worst Trump-dominated Republican characteristics is their reliance on gaslighting. They appear to have made an art form of lying, insisting that obvious facts are not true and telling Americans to believe them.

Denying verifiable reality and sowing mistrust of knowledge and perceptions is routine for Republicans both for political expediency and to protect the interests and feelings of their leader, Mr. Trump. It has been a degrading spectacle, and one in which Democrats, for all their faults, did not appear to be replicating.

The debate, however, revealed that Americans have been systematically hoodwinked by Mr Biden’s inner circle who insisted that, despite “senior moments”, Mr. Biden remained sharp and mentally agile. It’s likely that Mr. Biden does not realize the extent of his deterioration. But his most important enablers, especially his wife, Dr Jill Biden, have apparently not only failed to inform most of the party and public about his actual condition, but don’t seem to have told him the truth either.

Now the party has rallied around Mr. Biden, ensuring he will remain its candidate. But now we know why he has given so few interviews and press conferences, and has been shielded, to an unprecedented extent from unscripted public events. Mr. Biden huddled with his family on Sunday and was reportedly unanimously urged to stay the course.

Most major party leaders and donors have waved away his public mental implosion as “a bad night”. Former president Barack Obama assured the public every candidate has such stumbles. But this was manifestly not an ordinary “off day”, or the consequence of an illness or other circumstance likely to improve or not be repeated. Mr. Biden lacks the ability to roll back the hands of time.

It makes raw political sense for the Democrats to stick with him. Trying to replace him now risks a collapse into infighting by the interest and identity groups that make up the coalition, and take numerous ballots at the convention to decide a nominee. That candidate might be hobbled by resulting recriminations.

But such a candidate might inspire and electrify the party and public. Voters are clear they don’t like either candidate and are keen on a younger, new face. The Democrats have many plausible such candidates, most notably Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

But the party obviously doesn’t want to take that risk and has made no effort to convince Mr. Biden to voluntarily step aside, free his delegates and decline to endorse anyone, which is what would set up the high-risk but high-reward gamble of a highly charged and very quick open process to find an alternative.

It’s obvious why Democrats want to stick with Mr. Biden. Replacing him might constitute political malpractice if all you care about is winning. And it can be plausibly argued that defeating Mr. Trump, given his authoritarian tendencies and adjudicated corruption, is all-important. Changing candidates is probably a much bigger risk than sticking with a tried-and-true president who enjoys the advantage of incumbency and several other invaluable qualities that an alternative would lack.

Many Democrats persuasively argue that the fundamentals will eventually favor Mr. Biden, current opinion polls notwithstanding. They would indeed be toying with those fundamentals if they charge off in search of someone else, assuming there’s no repeated public meltdown.

So, political expediency, the probability of victory, the need to preserve the existing Biden coalition, and a reluctance to hurt the feelings of their own leader, even without a cultic devotion to him, all explain this wagon-circling. Yet this also means that Americans must recognize that Democrats share some of the very worst qualities critics of the Trump-era Republican Party have most deplored. By waving the debate performance away as merely “a bad night”, a typical campaign “setback”, or, most preposterously, the result of “a cold”, Democratic bigwigs are gaslighting the public.

They are urging us to pretend we didn’t see what we saw, that it doesn’t mean what we know it means, or that it somehow doesn’t matter. For the party, maybe it is and must be only about winning. But even the imperative of defeating Mr. Trump, which remains crucial, does not excuse a shoddy exercise in deception that urges people to ignore an obvious and devastating reality they witnessed in real time.

Closing an election sale is certainly vital, but sober and patriotic political marketers should also care a little about the nature of the product. Democrats are probably right to stick with Mr. Biden if all they care about is beating Mr. Trump and taking no wild gambles. But even given the risks, it might be important to field a fully cognisant and competent candidate who doesn’t regularly have “bad days”, and who will surely have increasing numbers of them in private and public.

Above all, asking voters to ignore what they saw – rather than stressing the need to defeat Mr. Trump, or insisting that Mr. Biden will be a capable chief executive surrounded by strong lieutenants – is unforgivable.

The bottom line is that the Democrats are not nearly as different from the Republicans as many of us thought and hoped. That even implies that they might be almost as bad if they had their own version of Mr. Trump, which is, thank goodness, a remote prospect.

Democrats are still dramatically preferable to Republicans. But Americans and people around the world are discovering the contrast is not nearly as stark as previously imagined.