The Pardon

Dec 07, 2024

Joe Biden will be remembered for his insistence on running for reelection and refusal to step aside until damage had been done and for a pardon of unprecedented scope for his son. For now these actions overshadow a record of significant accomplishments that his successor will strive to undo. Perhaps that will change with time.

The pardon is unseemly, unsavory, and damaging in and of itself. Repeated assurances that Biden would not issue a pardon and allegation that prosecution of his son was politically motivated make it worse. The pardon is also understandable. Republican obsession with Hunter Biden long ago passed over into the realm of psychosis. The once and future president’s promise of revenge and retribution is to be taken seriously. Trump, many congressional Republicans, and the MAGA mob are drooling over the prospect of using Biden fils to stick it to Biden père. That qualifier “many” may be overly generous in granting some Republicans benefit of the doubt.

A case for the pardon can be made on legal and humanitarian grounds. There is precedent for it. Other presidents have pardoned family members. Other presidents have issued more controversial pardons (Zeitz, 4 Presidential Pardons). Kim Wehle laid out the case (In Defense) in columns and interviews throughout the week (several are listed in the references section at the end). Along the way she offered clear-sighted perspective on what the pardon says about where we are as a country.

As I explained in an interview with Politico, President Biden’s choice to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, is a sad statement about where we are as a country. It is a sad statement that President Biden would abandon his promises and his professed values out of fear of what’s to come after January 20, 2025.
Still, the decision was one any good parent would make. And if the recipient was not Hunter Biden, nobody would blink an eye that a recipient with his profile got a pardon. (Wehle, Joe Biden is not)

I am not comfortable criticizing Joe Biden for putting his family above country and his duty as president. Who among us can say with confidence that we would sacrifice a son for the sake of principle trampled beyond recognition by our adversaries? Yet I cannot shy away from conviction that principle and duty, doing the right thing because it is the right thing, matter.

Determining the right thing, now there’s the rub, as the Bard had Hamlet put it. The anguish of Abraham, commanded to sacrifice his son, is the classic example. Painfully often moral choices lie not between good and evil, but between evils. We are in Sartre’s formulation condemned to choose.

Those who hold public office assume duties and responsibilities that go beyond those of ordinary citizenship, no office more so than the presidency. Joe Biden’s responsibility to act as “any good parent would” runs up against the duty as president to act for the greater good of the country by upholding the Constitution, rule of law, and established norms. Against this must be weighed the incoming president’s promise of retribution and contempt for any restraint imposed by the Constitution, rule of law, and established norms. The choice of Kash Patel to head the FBI put an exclamation point on that promise.

In the pardon’s immediate aftermath Democrats hastened to assemble the customary circular firing squad. The Biden camp charges detractors with holding him to a double standard as allegations that the press is preemptively capitulating to Trump make the rounds. Some question why Democrats should respect constitutional and legal constraints blithely kicked aside by Republicans. They should instead, the argument goes, get down in the muck and fight fire with fire. To do otherwise amounts to unilateral disarmament in the face of an unrelenting foe bent on their destruction.

The latter argument compels me to question the point of resistance if we are only going to look to Trump for our standard. Abandonment of principle for the sake of expediency takes us down a dark path that people who call themselves conservative ventured down well before the full-scale advance along it during the Trump era. One challenge among many facing Democrats is how to hold faithful to a higher standard without passively waiting to be mugged by MAGA.

Joe Biden may now be about as unpopular among certain factions within the Democratic Party as with Republicans. Not a few are eager to blame him for the results of last month’s election and more broadly the malaise afflicting the party. There is in those circles a rush to denounce the pardon because it flies in the face of commitment to rule of law and in doing so further erodes faith in a fair and impartial justice system by putting personal interest ahead of duty. Some of this appears sincere. There may also be some ducking for political cover. The two things are not mutually exclusive.

Trump and company gleefully incorporate Biden’s accusation that prosecution of his son was politically motivated into the MAGA narrative that the DOJ and FBI are corrupt through and through and must be purged, oblivious to the implication that the Deep State is somehow out to get both Biden and Trump. The charge that Biden provides Trump cover for his transgressions is overblown. Trump and his sycophants, a polite term for lickspittles, bootlickers, and toadies, do not need or care about cover.

It may be that none of it matters all that much in raw political terms. Bill Clinton has a point that takes us back to Kim Wehle’s assessment of where we are as a country:

When asked onstage [at the 2024 DealBook Summit] about whether the Hunter Biden decision would damage any future case Democrats could make about being a party that adheres to the rule of law, Clinton scoffed but didn’t deny it.
“We had a lot better record than Republicans did, didn’t we? And what good did it do us?” he said. “I mean, nobody believes anybody anymore.” (Sutton, Bill Clinton backs)

The pardon foofaraw has been a distraction from focus that belongs on the incoming administration. Its lasting impact will be a function of how much the fuss over it extends beyond the week. Whether it drags on or not, Republicans will continue to screech, and if not this, it would be about something else. It may provide self-proclaimed moderates another rationalization for supporting Trump, but if not this, it would be something else. And factions within the Democratic Party will continue to take potshots at one another as they screech about responsibility for the travails of their floundering party.

Yet we persist. Condemned to choose.

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Keep the faith.
Stand with Ukraine.
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David Matthews Portable Bohemia

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