It’s been about one year since Joe Biden was inaugurated, nothing much has been accomplished, and his popularity is in the dumps.
Is anyone surprised?
It’s not that the man is devoid of smarts, or sincerity, or ideas: he’s a pro, he knows how things work in Washington D.C., and he has good intentions. However, in these times, none of that matters because of the partisanship that is destroying our democracy.
And, to top off his woes, President Biden has two Democratic Senators, from Trump-friendly States, who are doing their best to frustrate his agenda and maybe increase their chances of reelection down the road.
Joe Biden is no Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt, but he did win office by beating his opponent by ten million votes nationwide. This trouncing was not so much a measure of Americans’ trust in him as it was a referendum on the legacy of Donald Trump. The latter had worn out his welcome and just about anyone that the Democrats put up against him in the 2020 election would have probably prevailed.
As was the G.O.P. practice when Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were in the Oval Office, the current Republican Party guerrilla warfare experts in the Senate and House of Representatives have taken a solemn vow to frustrate every policy initiative that the Administration puts on the table. This leaves the impression that Joe Biden doesn’t know up from down and that the Democrats are totally inept.
Of course, this same scenario occurs when there is a Republican in the White House: Democrats make his life miserable, denying the President policy victories whenever possible. The fact that this “game” goes on, Administration after Administration, is a testament to our flawed system of Constitutional democracy. Or, possibly, democracy itself: maybe this type of government just can’t work in today’s world, where “yellow journalism” is now mainstream media and social media spreads misinformation instantaneously. Who knows what’s true anymore?
“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Some British dude named Lord Acton came up with this quip several hundred years ago and its has stood the test of time.
Power-hungry men don’t like to share power and they will do anything to achieve their ends. Politicians covet power and spend most of their time trying to acquire more of it by any means necessary. In much of the world, dictators crush opposition by military force and intimidate the public with secret police goons. In more civilized democracies, gerrymandering and voter suppression are used to ensure reelection of incumbents, and the Supreme Court of the land has become politicized to the extent that it can implement policy that is not popular with the majority of the populous by creatively imagining the law.
Since 1980, the reelection rate of incumbent Congressmen averages about 90 percent and, for Senators, about 85 percent. It’s amazing: these power-hungry idiots are being reelected every year while just about every citizen, Republican and Democratic voter alike, feels that nothing gets done in Washington D.C. except spinning wheels and wasting money. When election time comes around, the voter has the choice of electing either a Republican or Democratic doofus who will happily settle down in the D.C., act like a big shot, be treated like royalty by lobbyists, and get absolutely nothing done of consequence during his or her term except score some verbal potshots against the opposing Party hacks. Inexplicably, these “victories” justify reelection the next time around.
Go figure.
I pity Joe Biden, for the struggles he will face in the next three years and pity the next schmo who follows him into the White House in 2024. It’s a no-win situation, with our democracy functioning/mis-firing the way it is.
My father used to say that the ideal form of government would be a “benevolent dictatorship”. Of course, that idea runs afoul of Lord Acton’s truism and the reality that autocrats typically surround themselves with sycophants who are loathe to utter anything critical to the ruler, who might be having a bad day and has come up with a really bad idea. Ex-President Trump, who tried to make the Presidency an emperorship, experienced bad days just about every day, it seemed.
I loved my Dad, and he was a great mechanic and father, but he thought Barry Goldwater could be that so-called “benevolent dictator”. The Arizona Senator was the same guy who said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice…”, which is pretty much what motivated the Capitol Riot insurrectionists in January 2020. He also advocated using nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War. It was his way or the highway, I guess.
The way things are going with our failing democracy, we might be heading for a Barry Goldwater down the road. With the system we have, a Presidential candidate with minority approval (i.e. loses the popular vote for President) could win the White House, Senate and House majorities (representing less than half of the voters in the United States) could rubberstamp the President’s agenda, and we could end up with, essentially, an autocrat forcing the majority of Americans to live under a regime that they don’t like.
Sounds far-fetched? It could happen in 2024… like it did in 2016.
And we know how that turned out.