FIRST BIG DECISION FOR THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: THE CLOCK TICKS

 

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office January 20, assuming the burden of righting the American ship. They have a big job and not long for getting it done.  They’ll have

tough decisions before long. Political reality and history teach that the clock has already started ticking on what they can accomplish.

Presidential terms run four years, but windows of opportunity for passing major legislation close quickly under the weight of pent-up frustrations in a president’s own party, approaching mid-term elections, and opposition candidates revving their engines on runways for the next presidential race. Biden enjoys no exemption from this cruel cycle. Anyone looking hard enough can 

see it looming in the distance.

Biden’s Burden

Biden’s first days have made clear his priorities: (1) get the pandemic under control,(2) fix the related economic problems, (3) address climate change, and (4) attack racial injustice. Biden’s team acknowledges things like infrastructure, tax reform, and rectifying some of former President Donald Trump’s  excesses must wait. That array of priorities creates challenges and opportunities.

Fires rage around the four priorities and many reasons exist for tackling them first.  The country watches carefully. Other than the rabid COVID-19 deniers, most Americans want an end to the death, pain, and personal sacrifice that go with the pandemic.  We can’t imagine anyone being happy with the job losses and business disruption. Many of us have been railing about climate change and racial injustice for years. A strong desire exists for taking on Biden’s targeted issues.

That doesn’t mean his solutions will get unanimous support, or even enough for solid progress. He has offered big, bold proposals for dealing with all four problems. He wants, for example, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19

relief package that includes big stimulus checks, minimum wage increases, significant dollars for cash-strapped state and local governments, and vaccine distribution money.

That’s where the hard choices come. Because Biden’s proposals will draw Republican opposition – even obstruction – he soon must choose between proceeding in the bipartisan way he prefers and taking what he can get with only Democratic support. Thanks to Harris as vice president, he enjoys a one-vote majority in the senate. Speaker Nancy Pelosi presides over a narrow Democratic advantage in the House. Biden has so far refused invitations to set deadlines, but everyone expects a day of reckoning will come. He can keep seeking bipartisan approval or go it alone, knowing he must act quickly or lose his chance. 

 

The Politics

Right now, Biden’s Democratic support results from a coalition of the willing. Moderate

Democrats cut in the mold of senators like Dick Durban of Illinois and John Hickenlooper, a rookie from Colorado, and progressives like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and New York Representative Alexandria

Ocasio Cortez remain on board. Nobody knows how long Biden (and Harris) can keep this fragile alliance together. He’s avoided a fracture by making cabinet and staff appointments that have something for everybody and issuing executive orders addressing the pent-up frustrations of both sides of his potentially divided house, a house motivated by intense distaste for Trump. With Trump gone, how long this glue sticks remains an open question.   

Across the aisle, some Republicans see the virtue in working with Biden. How many isn’t clear. It’s likely a small number in either house of Congress. Assuming the filibuster rule remains, if it’s ten in the Senate, Biden could get 60 votes and potentially pass broad legislation, like he’s proposed on COVID-19. If it’s one or two, or zero, he’s probably reduced to a stand-alone vaccine distribution bill many Republicans would vote for or something he could pass under budget reconciliation that only requires 51 votes. It’s hard to imagine what such bills would look like, but they won’t have the big, bold provisions Biden wants.

Many Republicans will say they oppose Biden’s bills – especially the COVID-19 relief package -- because of cost. Ordinarily they’d have a point, but under the current unique circumstances, their argument holds much less weight. With interest rates as low as they are, the government can borrow for a big relief package for next to nothing. Given how much the pandemic costs in health care expenses, lost tax revenue, and infrastructure expenditures incurred in fighting the disease, arguably the nation can’t afford not enacting a big package.  

A Little History

Biden should keep in mind Barack Obama’s

2009-10 experience with the Affordable Care Act. Obama believed he could get Republican support if he scaled back the bill by (1) leaving out a public option and (2) modeling the program after what Mitt Romney implemented in Massachusetts. Democrats screamed, but Obama held firm. GOP votes  never came and Obama, having lost his 60-seat senate majority with the

death of Ted Kennedy and the surprise victory of Scott Brown in a Massachusetts special election, settled for no public option and passing the bill under 

the reconciliation 

procedure.

Biden was there, of course, as vice president, so he’s  aware of the dilemma he’ll soon face. The fact the country wants COVID relief as 

badly as it does arguably gives him cover. If he can make real progress on ending the pandemic, many people outside Washington won’t care what he asked Congress for and did or didn’t get. He can declare victory and take on the next problem with good will stored away.

Biden doesn’t have forever. Republicans have started showing their hand, complaining about the size and scope of many of his proposals and asking why he hasn’t  consulted

more with them. Nearly everyone wants bipartisan solutions to the nation’s problems -- except those who don’t and, unfortunately, some of them serve in Congress.   

                     

IMPEACHING A PRESIDENT: FOR WHAT WE ARE ABOUT TO RECEIVE

Now that the House Judiciary Committee has

approved two impeachment articles against President Trump, and a vote in the full House of Representatives impeaching him appears inevitable,  we ask, “What’s next?” The easy answer –  trial in the  Republican-controlled U.S. Senate –  only partly tells the story.

Impeachment could impact the 2020 election (or not). Americans may long debate this impeachment (or not). This might represent a watershed moment in American politics (or not). We find looking at the possibilities more intriguing than reviewing the tedious judiciary committee debate that brought us to this point.

Impeachment and the Election

Many Democrats who can’t stand Trump resisted impeachment as long as they did because they saw it negatively affecting the party’s 2020 chances. This theory found support in public reaction after Attorney General William Barr

Special Counsel Robert Mueller

exonerated  Trump upon release of the Mueller Report. Barr mischaracterized the Special Counsel’s work, something a lot of people now understand, but he set the narrative for a good while. In the short term, Barr’s bad faith spin doctoring set up Trump for spiking the ball and dancing in the end zone, proclaiming, “No collusion. No obstruction.” It seemed a Senate vote acquitting Trump after impeachment in the House might produce a repeat and give him big advantages next November.

Continuing the football analogy, upon further review, history doesn’t necessarily support that idea. Bill Clinton’s highest approval ratings followed acquittal in his impeachment trial but, arguably, Clinton'simpeachment fueled George W. Bush’s victory over Al Gore in 2000. At the

very least, it provided Bush a ready-made slogan about “restoring dignity” in the Oval Office, a thinly disguised shot at Clinton for having sexual relations with an intern in that very office.

Oval Office

The impeachment articles against Trump don’t accuse him of sexual misconduct, but the overwhelming evidence of his malfeasance in connection with Ukraine lets the attack ads write themselves. Arguments Republicans make in defending him are as flimsy as crepe paper in a hurricane. Trump should survive the Senate trial because enough GOP senators won’t defect. The American people may well play the role of referee and throw a flag for excessive celebration. In truth, only those long bamboozled by Trump’s act will see acquittal as a reason for voting for him. Impeachment, therefore, may not much affect the election after all.

The Debate

Many words got thrown around in the seemingly endless judiciary committee impeachment debate. We lived through the Nixon and Clinton impeachments. This seemed different and not in a good way. The result, both in the House and Senate appears so baked in, even political junkies might ask, “Why bother?”

House Democrats answer with the irrefutable contention that they couldn’t avoid impeaching Trump and still claim they’re protecting and defending the constitution, as their oaths require. Being lawyers, we get that.  Still, we all know how this movie ends. In the absence of an astounding

development none of us foresee, the House will impeach Trump on a party line vote with defections by four or five Democrats from districts Trump won, the Senate will acquit him with the only mystery being how many Republicans defect. The betting will center on whether a majority of senators vote for conviction, a possibility, given vulnerable GOP incumbents like Maine’s Susan Collins and Colorado’s Cory Gardner and Trump skeptics like Utah’s Mitt Romney who may join Democrats in voting for removal.

 

We fear this impeachment saga will not produce memorable moments. We won’t see brave, principled House Republicans bucking their party and voting for impeachment as seven did against

Nixon in 1974. Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan isn’t around, proclaiming her faith in the  constitution, despite its initial mal-treatment of her racial ancestors. In a few months, post impeachment political discourse probably sounds much like pre-impeachment political discourse.

 

An Impeachment Legacy? What Legacy?

                 

Trump, like Clinton, like Nixon, and like Andrew Johnson will now have impeachment in the first

paragraph of his obituary. But, with a president who has lied as much and committed as many offenses, many of them criminal, how much difference does that make? Is this a watershed moment in American politics or something else?

 

We can offer one unpleasant possibility. The legacy of the Trump impeachment may lie in the fact our hyper partisan politics means the nation can now never remove a president from office, no matter what that president does wrong. Republican support for Trump, in the face of overwhelming evidence of his corrupt conduct, suggests we’re stuck with misbehaving chief executives, no matter their sins. Democrats say they’d behave differently with the shoe on the other foot, but are we sure?

Unless the opposition party holds 60 plus Senate seats, an improbability if not an impossibility, no

president gets removed. It won’t happen unless the country so turns against the president, senators of that president’s party believe they will pay a higher political price for loyalty than turning the other way.

 

This situation, therefore, presents troubling questions for American democracy. Have we reached a point at which only elections can remove renegade presidents? Can a president with a loyal, dedicated base really shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and get away with it? Do people so badly want their guy or gal in office that nothing else matters? Perhaps that’s this impeachment’s legacy, a discomforting thought, but maybe where we are.