Republicans, of course, are furious that President Joe Biden has given his son Hunter a sweeping pardon that covers over a decade of actual, maybe, and probably-not crimes. However, a number of Democrats are also upset that Biden went back on his word to grant clemency to his scandal-ridden son.
I was initially disappointed by the news. How did that joke go? “Say it ain’t so, Joe”?
Why is this so disappointing, though?
On the surface, it’s a matter of a broken promise. Biden repeatedly said he would let justice run its course and would not pardon Hunter if the man was convicted.
Below that, though, is a sense of loss: By going back on his word and, in a manner of speaking, subverting justice in favor of a family member, Biden has forced Democrats to cede the ethical high ground.
Democrats needed Joe Biden to be flawless in his conduct. They needed him to be the antithesis of Trump: collected where Trump was erratic, calm where Trump raged, moral where Trump promoted vice, ethical where Trump flaunted the rule of law.
For years, that was how Democrats were going to beat Trump: by being everything that Trump — and, by extension, the Republican Party — was not and not being everything Trump and Republicans were.
Where Republicans idolized their leader, Democrats criticized theirs; where Republicans never questioned Trump, Democrats didn’t shy away from challenging Biden; where Republicans happily bent the rules to serve themselves and their allies, Democrats (largely) insisted on following the established norms.
As Michelle Obama famously said, when they went low, we went high. And Democrats taking the moral and ethical high ground was supposed to save the country from another Donald Trump presidency.
But the election has taught us some very important things about politics and perception:
- If the Democrats do something good, right-wing media, politicians, and pundits will spin it into something bad, make up a total lie about it, or ignore it completely, and die-hard Republicans will never believe anything Democrats do is good and nothing Republican politicians do is bad.
- Die-hard Democrats — the ones who are politically engaged, not just in an election year — will celebrate the party’s wins, but they are rarely unquestioningly loyal to a specific politician or even the party. Many pro-Palestinian voters refused to vote for Biden because of his administration’s alliance with Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu.
- And everyone else — which seems to be most of America — just doesn’t care. They don’t know about the Biden administration’s big wins, like the CHIPS Act or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. And they don’t care to know.
So does it really matter that Biden pardoned his son on his way out the door?
Yes and no.
Yes, because, as some legal experts are arguing, Biden’s decade-spanning blanket pardon opens the door to Trump making similar pardons in a way he couldn’t quite get away with last time. It could give Trump the latitude to give blanket pardons to Jan. 6 rioters.
No, because Trump is working hard to stack his administration with nothing but yes-men in both official and unofficial capacities. So I would speculate that Trump would have been throwing out pardons like someone “making it rain” with a stack of dollar bills. He already campaigned on pardoning Jan. 6 combatants — he and his cronies likely would have found a way to do it even without Biden opening the door.
Yes, because Biden’s presidency was about re-establishing the president as a role model for political and personal conduct. It was about proving that a “good” person could sit in the Oval Office and not use its power to benefit themselves, their family, or their friends. By pardoning Hunter, Biden undercuts the image of an unimpeachably moral and ethical president that he has maintained for four years.
No, because the people who like Joe Biden — or at least respect him — will most likely continue to do so while the people who dislike Biden already disliked him, and people who are indifferent will probably remain indifferent.
Yes, because, as Heather Cox Richardson rightly points out, Trump has tapped Kash Patel to lead the FBI, and Patel is “obsessed” with Hunter Biden, his laptop, and a number of related conspiracies. Richardson quoted legal commentator Asha Rangappa: “People criticizing the Hunter Biden pardon need to recognize: For the 1st time, the FBI and Justice Department could literally fabricate evidence, or collaborate with a foreign government to ‘find’ evidence of a ‘crime,’ with zero accountability. That’s why the pardon goes back to 2014.” This was the only thing Joe Biden could do to protect his son from an administration that is looking to hurt Joe and his family in any way it can.
No, because with a three-branch majority, Republicans have already made it clear they plan to go after any and all enemies — real or perceived — and the pardon from his father may still not protect Hunter from Republicans’ wrath.
In some ways, I am still disappointed in Joe Biden for using the power of the presidency to benefit his family, tarnishing the image of him as a president who brought the office back from the cesspool of corruption it was during the Trump years.
But when I look at the bigger picture, I can’t fault him for doing it. This is all that Biden can do to shield his son from an incoming political system that wants to destroy them. And I don’t believe that it has set any precedent or broken any unspoken rule that Trump hasn’t already set or already planned on breaking.
As one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden chose to be a good father. I can respect that.
J. Nelson - Writer 