No country for old men

When Biden first got elected, I wrote http://www.alexanderboot.com/an-old-man-and-dc/, saying he was too old for the job.

Well, he hasn’t got any younger in the intervening period. And yet Joe Biden has just announced his candidature for a second term in the White House.

You are welcome to read my earlier piece, making it unnecessary for me to repeat myself. That leaves space for making a different point: this announcement puts American democracy on hold, if not yet in a coffin.

Now, I’m not a great champion of unlimited democracy, in fact of unlimited anything. That’s why I believe in severely limited franchise and any number of other constitutional counterbalances to elected power.

And I am man enough to admit that at least two chaps beat me to this bright idea by 2,500 years: Plato and Aristotle (not that I’m suggesting I belong in that company). However, in this case it doesn’t matter what the three of us think. My ideas, and even those of the other two gentlemen, have no bearing on American politics.

The only thing that counts is what most Americans think, and they tend to worship at the altar of democracy, with franchise spread as wide as common sense will allow, and sometimes beyond such limits.

The essence of that form of government is that only elected officials wield political power. In our case it’s Parliament spearheaded by those on the ruling party’s front benches. The American system is different, with the powers separated more sharply. The president isn’t a member of the legislative branch, and neither are the cabinet members he appoints.

But the same core principle applies: both the president and the legislators are elected officials, the only kind allowed political power by the US Constitution. My contention is that an octogenarian president who is manifestly incapable of wielding power undermines the Constitution.

Even at the time I wrote that article, it was clear to anyone with eyes to see that Joe Biden wasn’t quite compos mentis. His two attacks of cerebral aneurism combined with a heart condition known to cause senility and with plain anno domini to produce a demonstrable cognitive decline.

Everything about Joe Biden is progressive, including such conditions. No miraculous recovery will occur. His mental state will continue to worsen steadily.

In that old piece I wrote that Kamala Harris was likely to act either as an éminence grise or as a conduit for the more subversive groups on the left of US politics. Since then it has become obvious she is incapable of playing the first role, although she may well act in the second.

But that’s neither here nor there. What ought to be clear to everyone is that, if Biden is re-elected, he’ll be president in name only. Presidential powers will be in someone else’s hands and, as far as the Constitution is concerned, it doesn’t really matter whose.

The last time America faced such a situation was in Reagan’s second term, when the de facto president was James Baker, an appointed official in all his government posts. That too was unconstitutional, but at least both the situation and the personalities involved were different.

China wasn’t yet a major world power, the Soviet Union was in transition and therefore temporarily unthreatening, both inflation and unemployment were down, the country was in her longest post-war period of expansion. Hence it was enough to keep two fingers on the helm for the ship to maintain a steady course.

Who owned those two fingers had a great legal significance but little of any other kind. Today, when the world is teetering at the edge of an apocalyptical conflict, and Western economies are flagging everywhere, US included, things are far from being as rosy.

The weaker a country, the greater its need for a strong leader – this is axiomatic. But in a democracy run riot, such as the US, it’s not enough for the electorate to know the leader is strong. The people must also know whether or not the leader is the same man they elected.

A country like America mustn’t be ruled by a faceless cabal lurking in the shadows. That, however, is exactly what will happen if Biden is re-elected. When the president is an empty space, someone will fill it – and I have a hunch that the group of likely candidates includes no one as competent or well-meaning as James Baker.

Americans don’t need Plato, Aristotle or even me to tell them all that. They know it themselves, which is why 70 per cent of them are opposed to Biden’s running. An opinion poll has no legal power, but surely this one provides a reliable insight into the will of the democratic majority.

This suggests that practically any Republican candidate will waltz into the White House, assuming, rather than delegating, constitutional powers. But that’s not a forgone conclusion – after all, as things stand now, the likeliest Republican candidate is Donald Trump.

Now, for the same reason that I don’t like unlimited democracy, I dislike any politician inspiring equally hysterical emotions both pro and contra. Allowed to run free, emotions override (trump?) reason, and their clash may well take governance out of the constitutionally stipulated offices and into the streets.

That’s not the British way and, inasmuch as many American institutions are modelled on their British precursors, neither is it American. That sort of thing is best left for countries without strong constitutional traditions but with emotionally volatile populations.

I wonder how many of those 70 per cent opposed to Biden are as or more fervently opposed to Trump as well. Confronted with what they’d see as the evil of two lessers, they may well deliver a second term to Joe.

Reagan was senile in his second term, but before he lost the capacity to govern he had appointed a few able men who could take up the slack. Biden doesn’t have such a talent pool at his disposal, which he proved in his announcement speech.

To his credit, he managed to read the teleprompter without committing any of the gaffes that have become his trademark. But the only policy he mentioned as a panacea for America’s economic ills was his proposed tax on billionaires.

That was a direct appeal to emotions and some of the cardinal sins, mainly envy. But couldn’t his speechwriters and advisers come up with something less transparently idiotic?

There are 724 billionaires in the US. Forcing them to pay enough in taxes to make the slightest bit of difference to a country with a budget of somewhere between six and seven trillion would simply make them flee, leaving everyone else the poorer.

The next US presidential election won’t be the first one to make me quake in my boots. But the amplitude of the quaking will be greater than ever before.

The US and what’s left of the free world need a strong leader more than they have needed one for generations. And they have the right to know exactly who that strong leader will be, not which cabal he’ll front.