The Wind at Our Back Could Be Stronger
In a previous piece – “’Whom the Gods Would Destroy, They First Drive Mad’ (Holding a Mirror to my GOP-Supporting Neighbors)” – argued that the Democrats have “the wind at their backs” because “the Republicans have put themselves on a strategically disastrous course.”
That is good news for America, but the news could be better. The MAGA approach of the Republicans is turning off a small chunk of the electorate who might otherwise vote for the GOP. And that small chunk looks likely to be enough to move power from this unprecedentedly destructive Republican Party.
But it remains a close call and -- with the future of American democracy at stake – it is regrettable if we are dependent on uncertainties (like will the U.S. be in a recession on Election Day 2024?) to assure that the Force of Fascism does not take power.
It is in that context that I would like to supplement that previous optimistic piece -- about how the “madness” of these Republicans looks likely to result in their self-destruction – with the present piece, about how I wish that our Democratic President would use his “Bully Pulpit” to maximize the number of Americans who recognize what the Republican Party has become.
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Biden’s Strengths, but Important Weaknesses, Too
Mind you, I have a very positive feeling toward President Biden. I think that overall he’s done a creditable job: an excellent ratio of things well done to things poorly done. Biden has assembled and run an administration as component as any I can remember (and I remember back to Eisenhower).
And Biden has reliably pushed in directions that are likely to be good for the nation.
But Biden has his serious limitations.
Behind the scenes, he’s been quite capable. But as a public orator, he barely gets a passing grade.
He’s seems to be one of the most decent people ever to be President, but he almost totally lacks the capability to move people (the way an FDR or a Reagan could do). A man with a life-long speech problem, this President makes rather poor use of the “bully pulpit.”
And this is a moment in our national history where America could really use a President able to deliver powerful messages from the bully pulpit.
The Central Reality of this Historical Moment in America
Combined with Biden’s limitations as a speaker are his apparent inabilities to deal with what historians will surely regard as the Central Reality of this historical moment in America: that one of America’s two major parties has become profoundly fascistic, unprecedented in the various ways it has been working to replace American democracy with an authoritarian state in which the few are dominated by the many.
It is difficult to over-estimate the enormity and gravity of the rise of such a party.
Future historians will surely see the transformation – over the past 30 years -- of a once-normal and respectable political party into such a destructive political party as the big story of this era. Never previously in our history has a major American political party been so reasonably described as “a coherent force that consistently makes the human world worse, more broken.”
And that phrase – “a coherent force that consistently makes the human world worse – I propose as the best definition of “Evil,” because it acts in the world much as Evil was traditionally understood as acting, and because such a Force can be “seen” in action.
(See What’s Revealed by the “Pure Case” of the Consistently Destructive Actor.)
So remarkably has the Republican Party come to exemplify such a force that it is difficult to find any place in our political process where the words and deeds of the Republican Party have made things better and not worse.
And that once-respectable Party – both the great majority of the Party structure and of the Party’s base – has subordinated itself to the will of a former President who, right before everyone’s eyes, has been a one-man crime wave, and -- in particular – who refused to accept his legitimate defeat, who lied continually about the election as part of a comprehensive effort to overthrow the constitutional order to hold onto power against “the will of the American people.”
It is a Party that, over the past 30 years, has done a whole long series of things that were “unprecedented,” all of them in ways that degrade the American political order.
The Democrats’ Costly Obliviousness
And it is difficult to over-state how inadequately the Democrats have responded to this growing threat over the past 30 years. How blind Democrats have been to WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST.
How it took decades for the Democrats to recognize the fundamental change in the nature of the American political battle.
And -- in acting as if it were still “politics as usual” -- Joe Biden has epitomized that Democratic inability.
Biden is a Good Man who’s ill-equipped to fight Evil.
Ill-equipped in that, like Obama, Biden does not readily recognize when he’s up against people who insist on being his enemies, and does not readily deal with them – as is his duty -- as if they are enemies. Ill-equipped in that, again like Obama, Biden reaches out with Goodwill toward a political Party that is degrading American democracy at virtually every turn. (That, indeed, is assaulting the very Order that, in becoming President, he took an oath “to protect and defend.”)
Many important successes. But Biden’s shortcomings in this area are no small thing.
Historians of the future will see clearly that the Central Task for a President in these times has been to fight and defeat the destructive force attacking American democracy.
And the way a President, in our still-democratic politics, must fight that battle – which is one of Democracy v. Fascism, which aligns rather well with Good v. Evil -- is to lead as much of the American electorate as possible to see today’s Republican Party for the “Evil” it has become, and therefore to move as many Americans as possible to use their votes to strip that Party of its power to damage the nation.
(No need to use the word “Evil.” The Evil can be shown, just as the makers of movies like Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, and Avatar don’t use the word “Evil,” but get the audience to experience those forces as Evil.)
The polls and recent elections have shown that Americans have already been moving in that direction — their rejection of the more fascistic, dishonest, and crazy Republican nominees in competitive races. Enough that the people have been stripping the Republicans of power.
But little of that promising movement has been thanks to President Biden. In the run-up to the 2022 midterms, fortunately, President Biden was effective in increasing public awareness of the Threat to Democracy. Evidence suggests that contributed to the Republican failure to meet expectations.
But once the election was over, Biden has reverted to his habitual way of relating—extending Goodwill to those who threaten our democratic order.
Mr. Nice Guy, historians will say, seems to have trouble seeing the darkness of what he’s up against, and even more difficulty in rousing himself to denounce that destructive force in ways that would move Americans to repudiate rather than support a political party whose conduct is so consistently harmful to the nation.
(A Party that, most recently, had exposed their dark nature in this debt-ceiling issue, when their conduct amounts to holding a gun to the nation’s head and snarling, “Meet our demands or we’ll blow America’s head off!”
(Meanwhile, Mr. Nice Guy has done little to help the American people see what the Republican extortion revealed about the spirit of the Republican Party.
(And as of this writing, many good observers are wringing their hands in the fear that Biden is rewarding the hostage-takers with concessions. I myself am worried about that, but have not given up hope that Biden’s got a speech prepared in which he will tell the nation that it is his constitutional duty to invoke the 14th Amendment, rather than allow extortionists to use a superfluous 1917 law to blackmail the nation.)
It would have been better for America if its leader had been able to make full use of the Bully Pulpit, with messaging that led as many Americans as possible to see the reality of today’s Republican Party.
Biden Still Deserves Our Gratitude
While Biden’s weakness at that task is regrettable, and while that task is the one America most urgently needs to have its President perform well, we should not lose sight of how important Biden’s other accomplishments have been.
Most notable there are all the ways the Biden has restored decency, honesty, the Rule of Law, and America’s role as “leader of the free world” (at a time when a fascist dictator’s naked aggression made such leadership essential).
Never in American history has a President been so vast an improvement on his predecessor,
And if President Biden’s strengths are not well-matched to the current domestic battle between Democracy and Fascism, the task must fall to other leaders to deliver the necessary impactful message.
The “pulpit” commanded by these other leaders may not be the “bully” one best suited to the job. But others with powerful voices – like Jamie Raskin in the House, and Elizabeth Warren in the Senate – can do their best to move the American people to see the Republican Party for what it has become, and to consign it to the ash heap of history.