US President Joe Biden cannot do it alone

Francis Wilkinson, Tribune News Service

What has changed since the presidential debate last Thursday? A lot and very little. We are mostly where we were two years ago. An old president, past his prime, who supports democracy and the rule of law, is running against an old criminal, sexual abuser and serial fraudster who leads an authoritarian movement with fascist accents. The only difference is the old president is two years further past his prime, and the fascist accents are increasingly pronounced. By now, several days past President Joe Biden’s debate debacle, most people have come to understand that there is no ready solution. If we haven’t heard Democrats clamoring for Biden to be replaced by his vice president, it is because not enough Democrats want Biden to be replaced by his vice president. And if the vice president is not the obvious successor to the president, then no one is.

With no obvious consensus among a diverse group of party elites and voters, decision-making remains firmly in the hands of Biden himself, who ran for the Democratic nomination against minimal competition and won easily. The Democratic bench is unusually robust. But the recent history of challenges to incumbent presidents bred caution among ambitious men and women. Lyndon Johnson faced a challenge. Democrats lost. Jimmy Carter faced a challenge. Democrats lost. George H.W. Bush faced a challenge. Republicans lost. Unless another geriatric shoe drops, Biden will likely be the Democratic nominee at the party convention in August. But the dynamics of the contest, which weren’t great for Biden to begin with, have now shifted further against him — though we won’t know by how much until the electorate has time to digest the debate fallout. Given the nation’s extreme polarization, the effect may be less than many anticipate. Democracy, however, is a team sport. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling released Monday, which effectively afforded Donald Trump immunity from prosecution for crimes, including his attempted coup, as long as he committed them while displaying a presidential seal, has underscored that democracy will remain imperiled throughout this campaign and beyond. Fortunately, Biden has an unusually strong team. It’s time to deploy it by campaigning with his cabinet members and running as the chief executive of a complex democratic enterprise where expertise and execution are broadly diffused. In effect, Biden should assume the role of player-coach rather than superstar.

Highlighting his cabinet takes some of the unique pressure off the president, but it also conveys a powerful contrast with Trump. Veterans of Trump’s cabinet and senior White House staff have called him “unfit,” a “threat to democracy,” a man constantly seeking to commit illegal acts, and “off the rails,” among other choice assessments. A former White House chief of staff said Trump has “nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” These are fundamental contrasts that should be highlighted daily.

The team approach must respect federal law restricting federal employees’ political activities. But it lends itself to important contrasts on issues, which anyone can discuss. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is a dynamic spokesman for the Biden administration’s investments in infrastructure — and all the jobs and productivity gains that advanced infrastructure promises. From lower insulin costs to progress on climate policies, cabinet members and high-profile members of Congress can reinforce the president’s message more aggressively and creatively than reelection campaigns focused on one leader typically achieve. What’s more, the Democratic team drawn from Congress and the cabinet is extremely diverse — another powerful contrast with MAGA. Seeing that diversity on the main public stage with the president, instead of relegated to smaller regional events headlined by select cabinet officials, would be a powerful reminder to a range of voters — women, Black, Asian, Hispanic — that the Democratic Party is not the exclusive province of old White men. It is representative of the diverse America of the 21st century.

It’s not hard to make a compelling case that the federal government, with a budget of $6.5 trillion and a civilian workforce of more than 2 million, is not the work of one lonely soul in the Oval Office. Here again, the typically smooth-running Biden administration, featuring a stable and competent cabinet, offers a sharp contrast with the chaos, incompetence and corruption of Trump’s administration. None of this alters the singular nature of the American presidency. The president is the ultimate decider, and the Biden campaign will have to show that Biden retains sufficient wisdom and acuity to reproduce his successful first term. But the president’s faltering debate performance can’t be undone, and it would be a mistake for Biden partisans to pretend that we didn’t see what we saw. Honesty is one of the most important contrasts with Trump, whose relentless lying at Thursday’s debate, like his criminality, would be disqualifying in any remotely healthy political party.