It may have been understandable for Joe Biden, the father, to pardon his son Hunter. However, it was a mistake for Joe Biden, the president... and Democrats must find the courage to say so.
|
Listen To This Story
 |
Life is complicated, and so is politics. There are some problems and situations that are so complex that there are no easy answers, which is why it is so disingenuous for anybody to pretend to offer simple solutions. President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter is one of them.
On the one hand, you can’t blame Biden, who already lost two children, for wanting to keep his troubled son out of prison. This is especially true since his decision to run for reelection is the reason why Republicans pursued Hunter so relentlessly (as we noted last summer, if he wanted to protect his son, he should have announced then that he would quit after one term) and because another person in a similar situation likely would have gotten off with a slap on the wrist.
On the other hand, we must blame Biden… because this pardon is doing great harm to the country (and his party). Even though many Democrats don’t want this to be true, the president did exactly what they (rightfully) accuse Donald Trump of doing: Biden put his self-interest above everything else. Even worse, he did so after repeatedly saying that he would not. That’s inexcusable on many levels.
It would have been much better for him to say that, as a father, he wanted to pardon his son, but that, as president, he could not.
That would have highlighted the contrast to Trump and the GOP instead of blurring it.
Instead, the decision (and the lie) will do great harm to whatever is left of Biden’s legacy, and it deprives Democrats of the moral high ground when it comes to pointing out the corruption that will inevitably run rampant during Trump’s second term in office.
Or, to be more precise, it will deprive them of that moral high ground if they cannot bring themselves to criticize Biden right now for issuing the pardon.
That may seem terribly unfair in light of Trump having done much worse in his first stint as president and getting ready to shatter moral, ethical, and legal boundaries in his second term, but anything less would make the Democrats look like hypocrites.
Speaking of hypocrites, in the immediate aftermath of the pardon, Republicans were embarrassing themselves with breathless criticism of Biden’s decision as the height of corruption.
Please!
Trump would pardon any criminal for a cheeseburger… and the MAGA crowd would cheer him on. In fact, many of them did just that outside of a Manhattan courthouse earlier this year before he became a convicted felon.
Obviously, there is absolutely no chance that Republicans will tone down their rhetoric now because they have no shame and simply don’t care that they will look like hypocrites when Trump inevitably does something worse.
Which brings us to the president-elect, who offered one of the dumbest takes on a day of dumb takes.
“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” he asked on his social media platform. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
Only a complete fool would use this occasion to draw attention to his own coup attempt, the deadly insurrection he sparked, and the hundreds of convicts he duped into doing his bidding.
Fortunately for these “hostages,” help is on the way.
It seems inconceivable that Trump won’t pardon most (or perhaps all) of them shortly after taking the oath of office.
When that happens, Democrats have every right to blast such a move as the most egregious misuse of the pardon power in US history.
The only question is whether they can do so credibly… and that will be decided in the next 24 hours.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
