President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter has drawn a lot of criticism — and most of it, even the harsh partisan criticism, has real merit. There is no defense of the pardon other than this: He is a father, and what parents wouldn’t use the power they had to help their children in a crisis?
I’m not going to pretend that, faced with a similar circumstance, I wouldn’t have made the same decision: to do whatever it takes to protect my child, even if it means destroying my own legacy.
That complicates criticism of Biden’s decision. There is a human element to it that is tragic on so many levels. It truly lives up to the definition of ‘Shakespeare’, a common descriptor in today’s world, which nevertheless fits this event perfectly.
I’m sure this is painful for Biden, and the personal side of his decision is quite clear. The president’s entire life has been filled with compromises that prioritized his family versus prioritizing his duties as an elected official. And no matter how famous you are, no matter how impactful you are in society, ultimately that obituary listing the people you outlived never mentions colleagues or, for elected officials, voters.
Obituaries always mention family; that’s it. And if you’ve experienced the death of an important family member, those are the people who are there every day and night during the grieving period – the colleague you’ve enjoyed chatting with over the years or the relatives who are there the day after the funeral , the day after everyone else has left? I don’t mean to downplay non-family relationships, but the reality is that the people who are with you at the beginning of your life and at the end of your life are usually the same people over time: your family .
So as a human being and as a father, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do everything in my power – and Joe Biden still has a lot of power now – to protect my son or daughter.
Ultimately, it appears that Biden has some regrets that his political ambitions put his son in political and legal danger. You can conclude this from his pardon statement:
“The charges in his cases only came after several of my political opponents in Congress incited them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal negotiated by the Justice Department unraveled in court — with some of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for putting political pressure on the trial. Had the plea deal stood, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.
“No reasonable person looking at the facts of Hunter’s cases could come to any conclusion other than that Hunter was singled out solely because he is my son – and that is wrong.”
Note the multiple references to “my political opponents,” as well as the phrase “Hunter was only singled out because he is my son – and that is wrong.”
But Hunter did violate these laws, and Biden admitted as much in his statement. He simply believes his son was treated more harshly because of the political spotlight.
The president is most likely right when he says that the focus on Hunter only became politically important to the Republican Party after Biden became the frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. If Biden had not run for president in 2020, there probably never would have been charges would have been filed against his son and Congress would probably never have investigated him for a day.
What’s disturbing is that Biden is acting as if he couldn’t possibly have seen this coming. In 2018, as the Bidens were deciding whether to run for president or not, it was clear that many family members were in crisis. Reading the transcripts of the Hunter Biden trial from Delaware this year shows how the Bidens still had a lot of family problems as a result of the death of Beau Biden, who was apparently the rock of the family.
In retrospect, given the family’s struggles at the time with addiction or loss or both, it’s shocking that Joe and Jill Biden went ahead with their run for president at all. The risk of putting family members who were still struggling with their loss in the spotlight was enormous at the time. The Republican party had telegraphed — almost as a threat to Biden — that Hunter would be dragged through the mud if he went ahead and ran.
This is what makes this whole episode so tragic in Shakespearean terms. I think I can see the fear in Biden to this day. He hasn’t been the same since Beau’s death – and who among us wouldn’t be changed by that? But the question is whether he should have fled at all.
Should he have put his family, his party and his country in this situation?
By choosing to run for president, he was theoretically prioritizing the country over himself and his family. That’s what you do when you take on responsibility as a public servant, political appointee or elected official. special an elected official.
In the intelligence community, there are several background checks that assess people’s vulnerability. Sometimes it has to do with vices such as drug use or sexual promiscuity, but financial debt and family are also important concerns. In retrospect, it appears that Joe Biden had a great vulnerability towards his family when it came to his position as president.
I hope to never know the feeling of losing a child, so I can’t pretend to understand the various things going through the president’s mind when it comes to his son Hunter and how he raised him and Beau. I’m sure he has all kinds of strange regrets and feelings. I wish this wasn’t something we had to chew over publicly – but he chose to put his family in the political spotlight. He didn’t have to do this.
And now the question is: how much damage has Biden done under the auspices of protecting his son?
Presidential acts are acts of consent. It’s not quite what Richard Nixon said – “If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal” – but it’s close. If a president has done something unprecedented, it means there is a precedent. And once a president tries something and gets away with it, I promise you a future president will try something similar.
Welcome to a new precedent. The president has now overthrown a jury of fellow American citizens, not some kangaroo court, that convicted his son. And it acquitted him not only of the charges he faced, but of any future charges he might face because of everything he may have done over a ten-year period starting in 2014 (when Hunter was before the first tried to do business in Ukraine) until now. Experts told Politico that the scope of the pardon was unlike anything except Gerald Ford’s controversial pardon of Nixon after his resignation.
That aspect will also set a precedent. Who knows if Donald Trump will issue a pardon before he leaves office that will be virtually identical to Hunter Biden’s pardon — but that he will change the dates from June 15, 2015 (the day he rode down the escalator) to January 20, 2029, his last one, moved? day at the office? Whatever the odds, they have certainly gone up.
More importantly, Biden has now borrowed Trump’s rhetoric to describe what he sees as Hunter’s experience with the justice system. What kind of precedent will we set if both sides accept the premise that whoever is elected will politically persecute his or her opponents? It’s part of Biden’s rationale for the pardon. And it will certainly be Trump’s reason for future pardons.
What should the general public think of the legal system now? The leading Republican in the country (Trump) and the leading Democrat in the country (Biden) have both claimed that the system is unjust because of its politics.
Please explain to me who now takes the highest position on this issue. Does it matter at this point who brought us down this path, if everyone believes in the same conclusion? This is where I’m tempted to say “Welcome to Thunderdome,” because a reference to “Mad Max” feels relevant at the moment, but also a bit too doom and gloom even for my cynical taste.
Biden has made a big mistake, and it will really make a lot of people question everything they thought they understood about him in public service.
Character shines through in difficult moments, when it counts. Joe Biden had a choice between what was best for himself and his personal conscience, and upholding the oath he took as president. And he may have done what was best for his family, but he did not do what was in the best interest of the nation.
A word of caution for Democrats who are doing their level best to defend Biden’s decision here. If you’re a frustrated Democrat because you think Republicans spend too much time defending Trump’s every move and appointment because they fear punishment if they cross the line, don’t behave the same way. My sense is that many Democrats feel obligated to defend Biden’s decision here in some way, even if they can’t defend it.
I understand there is empathy for Hunter Biden becoming collateral damage in a major political fight. Some Democrats also fear that their criticism of Biden will be weaponized by the right-wing media. Well, what then? Wrong is wrong; take your medicine now. Trying to wish this away or sweep it under the rug as a one-time move by a loving father is a mistake.
This will be a forgiveness that will reverberate into the future. If you believe it’s bad for the country for Trump to mix business and family with governing, then it’s bad for a Democratic president to behave in anything like the same way. This slope is very slippery, and that’s why it’s hard not to wonder if we’re witnessing the Trumpification of Joe Biden. He allowed a personal complaint to dictate a presidential decision.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
