I say the following with full knowledge that it is early in Joe Biden’s presidency, and he has time to turn things around. But let’s be honest. Joe Biden is struggling. The retreat from Afghanistan was a shocking catastrophe. The stalled vaccine effort has led to yet another deadly COVID surge. Job growth has slowed. Inflation is troubling. The crisis at the border shows no signs of abating. Heck, even his big recent foreign policy win—the announcement of a key security agreement with Great Britain and Australia—created a dramatic diplomatic rift with France.
In short, there are reasons why Joe Biden’s approval rating is dropping to Trump-like levels.
I know full-well that not everything that happens on a president’s watch is that president’s fault, and that there was a good chance that a number of these crises would have arisen under a second Trump administration as well. But the Afghanistan crisis alone would be reason for deep concern, and both the timing and the manner of the American withdrawal were the president’s call. And that does not excuse one syllable of Trump’s unconscionable deal with the Taliban. Too many Americans were left behind. Too many allies were left behind. American casualties were unacceptable.
In short, this is exactly the time when a nation should be grateful that it doesn’t suffer under one-party rule and that accountability in the American system comes quickly. We’re just over 13 months from an election that could hand real power back to Republicans. If past patterns hold, they’ll win the House. They might even win back the Senate. Unless he can reverse course, Biden will face consequences for his failures.
So does that mean the system works?
No, not really. Yesterday, just as the internet was flooding with grim pictures from the border, Americans saw for the first time the precise legal strategy that Donald Trump reportedly embraced (the extent to which Trump agreed should be the subject of intense investigation) on January 6. You can read the entire memorandum below:
The author of the memorandum is John Eastman. He is (or at least was) no internet crank. He’s a former law professor. He’s a former law school dean. He’s a former Clarence Thomas law clerk. He’s the director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. Oh, and he was close to Donald Trump when the president of the United States was trying to overturn the results of an American election. He was reportedly in the Oval Office, and he spoke at the January 6 rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol.
For those who don’t follow the legalese, the plan had a few simple components. First, Pence was to use his power as presiding officer of the Senate to refuse to count the electoral college votes of seven “contested” states. He would then simply declare Trump the victor, since he won a majority of the remaining electoral college votes.
And if the Democrats protest? Fine. He sends it to the House to decide, where Republicans control 26 of the delegations. Trump wins there also. He remains president.
There’s no other way to describe this other than as a plan for a coup. It’s not a good-faith constitutional argument. It’s not permitted by the Constitution, and it’s not permitted by any remotely plausible reading of the Electoral Count Act. It’s Pence’s failure to execute this plan—or something quite like it—that fractured his relationship with Trump.
Had this plan been executed, it would have created the country’s greatest constitutional crisis since 1861. There would have been no constitutional reason for governors to recognize the authority of Donald Trump as president, yet there would have been no legitimate statutory process to confirm Biden’s victory. The issue would have rocketed to the Supreme Court in an atmosphere of violence and confusion that would have made the 2000 election dispute and Bush v. Gore seem like stories out of an idealized past.
And the person who was intentionally bringing his own country to the brink of utter chaos and potential dissolution is still the undisputed leader of his party and the front-runner for the 2024 nomination.
I write this newsletter less than a week after Ohio Republican Anthony Gonzalez, one of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after January 6, decided not to seek re-election. The reason? Cruelty and threats:
The congressman, who has two young children, emphasized that he was leaving in large part because of family considerations and the difficulties that come with living between two cities. But he made clear that the strain had only grown worse since his impeachment vote, after which he was deluged with threats and feared for the safety of his wife and children.
Mr. Gonzalez said that quality-of-life issues had been paramount in his decision. He recounted an “eye-opening” moment this year: when he and his family were greeted at the Cleveland airport by two uniformed police officers, part of extra security precautions taken after the impeachment vote.
There are still a number of brave GOP elected officials who resisted the attempt to steal the election then and resist the Trumpist takeover of the GOP now. The GOP is not a wholly-owned Trump subsidiary, and the reporting makes clear that multiple GOP senators rejected Eastman’s (and Trump’s) coup plan. We should be grateful for their resolve, and we should remain grateful for the courage of GOP elected officials who stood against Trump and stood against the grassroots as they both howled for action.
But is this a party that’s ready to govern the most powerful nation in the world? Are House Republicans led by serious adults or by Trumpist vassals, beholden both to an utterly unfit former president and to his increasingly radicalized base? And won’t their victory do nothing but embolden Trump and energize that base?
Yet at the same time, the performance of the Biden administration thus far cries out for correction. The Afghanistan debacle alone should lead to sharp electoral rebuke.
This is the challenge of modern American governance. The policy stakes are high enough that incompetence and even well-intentioned mistakes can have profoundly negative impacts on national security and the public good, yet the party that presents the alternative to failure hasn’t moved on from the corruption and failure of its own.
It’s as if the GOP of 1977 was convinced the path past Nixon was “more Nixon.” Now more than ever, we need to shed partisanship. Men and women of good will have to make their political support contingent on the good character and basic competence of the people who ask for their votes. Any other approach will lead us right back where we are now—to a struggling president who has replaced a failed president, with no clear, better alternative in sight.
One more thing …
Ok, that was bleak. But let’s turn things around and zoom out a bit. Lots of readers know that while I’m down on our political leadership, I’m far from convinced that American culture or the American economy are in dangerous decline. Here’s your latest bit of good news.
Yes, the American middle class is shrinking. Why? Because the upper-middle class is growing. More people are getting richer than poorer in these United States. Here’s our own Scott Lincicome with the Chart of the Day:
One last thing …
Two words. Derrick Henry. I love football, and I love watching King Henry run the ball. Note near the end when he (to quote a guy on Twitter) “bounced a grown man like a basketball.” Good times:
Please note that we at The Dispatch hold ourselves, our work, and our commenters to a higher standard than other places on the internet. We welcome comments that foster genuine debate or discussion—including comments critical of us or our work—but responses that include ad hominem attacks on fellow Dispatch members or are intended to stoke fear and anger may be moderated.