The balance sheet of President Biden’s administration is a negative, and his family’s business dealings are dubious. And his party wants to save democracy with means that threaten it.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Deliberately relaxed, dressed in a casual sweatshirt and the union’s baseball cap, Joe Biden is standing in front of an automobile factory in Michigan and hugging a worker on strike. He wants to appear empathetic and caring, but he is only underscoring the failure of his economic policy.
In recent years, he has dished out billions in subsidies to keep industrial production in the country and support middle class spending power. But those on strike at Ford are protesting how little they are being paid, along with inhumane working conditions.
The president dredged up Stone Age tactics: new debt, protectionism and a policy of industrial regulation. He wants to woo the middle class, embattled from globalization and the relocation of entire industrial sectors overseas; that’s a lot of money just to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. Because the impoverished and declining working class in former industrial regions like Michigan enabled Trump’s 2016 victory.
Apparently, the charm offensive has done little to help. Biden failed in his attempt to portray himself as a benefactor of working people at the taxpayers’ expense. Factory workers are dissatisfied, and the president’s approval rating is sinking. There is still anxiety about inflation after expenditures have pushed prices up to record levels.
A deep sociodemographic cleft divides society. Those who live in cities that are thriving and who are well off and educated vote Democratic. Those with lower income levels and less education on average and living in rural areas vote Republican.
Biden ran for president to overcome the divide. He wanted to heal and reconcile. But with regard to this issue, the most pressing of his term in addition to Ukraine, the president is unconvincing. The state of his health also leaves something to be desired. He may be physically fit for an 80-year-old, but his cognitive misfires are unmistakable.
A Family To Fear Engages in Objectionable Business
In addition, there is his family and its questionable business dealings. This applies not only to the president’s son, Hunter, but also to his brother. If one wanted to make a scandal out of their behavior in the same way that scandal is made out of Trump, one could call the Bidens the Sopranos of Washington.
The business model is always the same, whether we are talking about entanglement with a gas producer in Ukraine, a Chinese energy firm, a hedge fund or a company that wants to make a mint in Iraqi real estate. Sometimes it concerns business obviously related to a state in which relations with the White House would certainly not be a disadvantage.
The Bidens are making a reputation for themselves for using the position of vice president and now the president. Biden sometimes calls his close family members during a meeting — completely coincidentally, of course. The “big guy” is on the phone, they then say. That obviously impresses negotiating parties.
There has never been any proof that the president reaped any unlawful benefit. The Republicans’ effort to unseat Biden with the pseudo-judicial spectacle of an impeachment is thus all too transparent.
Since taking office as vice president in 2009, Biden has done nothing to rein in or distance himself from the wheeling-and-dealing members of his tribe. The White House only intervenes when the Bidens push things too far and, for instance, point to a prominent member of the family. Otherwise, there is silence, which one must interpret as an endorsement.
In Germany where, as everywhere in Western Europe, preference for the Democrats is strong and Republicans have been considered the devil since Ronald Reagan, one might imagine the scenario during Angela Merkel’s long term in office in which siblings and progeny used the chancellor’s name to support their deals.
That would have been impossible, of course. Merkel would not have lasted 16 years as chancellor, even if no one could prove anything in court. In contrast, in the U.S., Biden is running for reelection. You don’t have to be a purist to consider the entanglement indecent and Biden unelectable. That is even more the case when one considers the detail with which Trump’s lack of competence as the country’s highest officeholder is being dissected. Morality should be indivisible.
Biden’s party is indulging the president and consoling itself that he is the only one who can beat Trump. Friends in Ukraine also see Biden as a guarantor for support for Kyiv.
So, do the ends justify the means? Is Biden so indispensable that everything else comes second? Europeans who view the fight for the continent’s freedom as a priority would agree without hesitation. American voters may have a more nuanced view. That does not make them obstinate reactionaries or enemies of democracy.
Because of Trump’s misconduct and especially his role in the storming of the Capitol, Biden appears to be the lesser evil. The fairy tale of an irreproachable Joe and the evil Donald would be more believable, though, if the questionable means that Democrats and their attorneys are using in their fight for power were not so conspicuous.
Trump is facing four pending cases connected to his term in office, in addition to another indictment concerning his real estate dealings. You don’t have to believe in conspiracies to suspect a campaign is underway with help from the judicial system, given the number of indictments and their timing. The weightiest trials will occur during the most heated phase of the election campaign.
If Biden were securely seated in the saddle, one could believe in coincidences — that is the aftertaste that the court cases leave. Because Trump put democracy in danger, they are responding with methods that themselves weaken the democracy. Judges are not the state’s sovereign. It would be wiser to leave the verdict to voters when it comes to political matters.
Trump Is Thus Branded a Mafioso
In the case concerning the attack on the Capitol, Special Counsel Jack Smith is employing platitudes and political judgment. According to the indictment, Trump “creat[ed] an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode[d] public faith in the administration of the election.”
One could just as accurately argue that Smith is undermining public faith in the rule of law and impartiality of the judicial system with such an ambiguous and imprecise charge. Notably, the special counsel has refrained from asserting the element of the crime that would do more than anything else to justify the indictment: that Trump organized or otherwise knowingly incited the storming of the Capitol.
The prosecution has charged Trump with conspiracy, and it is relying on racketeering law devised to fight the Mafia. By way of justification, they say that the former president carried out the deeds with lawyers, advisers and staff. But that is outrageous. Any government action could thus be criminalized because it usually entails many people. But the charges are not failing to have political impact: Trump equals Al Capone.
The state of American domestic politics is depressing — an embattled president, an unpredictable challenger and a judicial system that is, in part, unrestrainedly politicized. The Democrats deny that the cases against Trump are politicized, but that doesn’t stop them from accusing the Republican-led Supreme Court of doing the same thing. That just confirms the impression of partisanship.
Europeans have little influence on the tribulations in Washington. They should thus take even greater care in doing what they have control over. They can improve their defense capabilities to the extent that they can stand beside Ukraine on their own. That would also allow them to reinvigorate Europe’s retreating influence in the world, in Africa or in the Caucasus, for example. But it is, of course, cheaper and more comfortable to pray that Biden wins reelection.
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