As America ponders future of Joe Biden, it should be wary of what it wishes for
This week has been a dreadful moment for everyone connected to the American Democratic party, as their leader and 46th President of the United States appears to be floundering progressively with every appearance. It’s been uncomfortable viewing for everyone, as one embarrassing gaff after another has brought furtive calls for the fragile 81-year-old to step down.
With major supporters and wealthy donors backing off, and some even attacking their beneficiary, the growing fear is that Mr Biden’s condition can only worsen by 5th November when he’s going to have to face-off the hovering figure of Donald Trump in the US elections. The thought and potential consequences of another term of Trump politics continues to divide not only the American public, but most of the free world as well.
For his part, and however bad the slip-ups are becoming, Mr Biden says he’s going nowhere soon. Just yesterday, in the midst of yet another round of disastrous howlers in which he seemed confused and unable to articulate policy positions, he was unequivocal in dismissing calls to stand down, and reiterated that he will be the Democratic nominee to beat Trump in November. Sadly, confidence in this is ebbing away rapidly, as one influential supporter after another has joined the ranks of those calling for change.
“We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate,” wrote Holywood icon and major financial supporter George Clooney in his New York Times op-ed this week.
“This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and Congress member and governor who I’ve spoken with in private,” lashed Clooney.
Elsewhere furtive whispers about the general health and cognitive problems of Mr Biden have now become shrill gossip, as the panic increases to install a replacement with a fighting change of beating Trump before it is too late. Detractors point out that the longer the Democratic Party waits, the worse Mr Biden will get and the less time there will be for a new leader to endear themselves to the American voting public.
Unfortunately, short of some obvious and unquestionable incapacity, no-one can replace the President of the United States except the President of the United States. To make matters even more complex, it’s the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month and at the moment there are no viable challengers so, whatever his state, Joe Biden is likely going to cruise through that event and come out as the nominated candidate to face Trump.
Given that this is the man who – in the event of a nuclear attack – has just six minutes to decide the fate of the world, it’s understandable that is no ordinary gladiatorial contest, and the rest of the world is watching nervously.
For anyone outside the American glass, making a voting choice between a dangerous, irrational and power-obsessed maverick who may be headed to prison and a man with a deteriorating intellect and increasingly clouded capacity to act seems like a very tough call. But – due to its inefficient, outdated and frankly shambolic election mechanisms – this is where American politics has come to.
We can agree or not with Joe Biden’s political portfolio, and in particular if one is a Catholic, but it’s uncomfortable at a human level to see any person being treated with such derision and to watch such self-evident deterioration in a man who has previously been noted for his sharp and incisive intellect. Such has always been the danger of expecting too much of our leaders and legislators, especially when we live in an increasingly inter-connected and fast-moving world where the demands on the person can rapidly become overwhelming.
Given this, there’s a genuine moral question about whether or not it’s right to allow an 81-year-old man who’s clearly struggling with the demands of his job to continue to be exposed to ridicule, with all the implications that also has for the reputation of America and the urgent need to address the global problems we’re all facing.
As Richard Branson said in his personal blog this morning: “US policy, for better or worse, has tremendous implications for the rest of us, especially for humanity’s capacity to confront the challenges that can only be tackled collectively, like climate change or the rising threats to global security … whether in politics or in business, a true hallmark of forward-looking leadership is to build a lasting legacy, and that includes knowing when to hand over the baton to a younger generation that can take over and move the country and humanity forward.”
Throughout all of this, America’s most outspoken politician – who normally doesn’t hesitate to gain traction out of the mistakes of others – has remained uncharacteristically quiet. That’s because Donald Trump knows only too well that when your opponent is imploding, you stay well out of the way. It’s a silence that should have the world worried, because the longer Biden clings to power, and the more he deteriorates, the more likely another Trump presidency becomes.
Whilst half of America may shudder at the prospect, the decline and indecisiveness of Joe Biden is increasingly endorsing a view that the antidote to a country becoming a global embarrassment is to endorse the kind of certainty and bullishness that Trump personifies. We’ll likely hear a lot about what kind of certainty is being offered by the Trump lobby at next month’s Republican Party convention, where it is expected that amongst other things the party is going to approve the shadowy Project 2025 proposal.
Unveiled in April 2023, the 900 page Project 2025 Report was put together by the right-of-centre Heritage Foundation which is spearheaded by many former Trump officials. Generally considered to be a manifesto for re-injecting Christian values into American society, the report calls for the sacking of thousands of civil servants, tightening immigration, dismantling the US education system, restricting the powers of the president, making sweeping cuts to taxation and – most divisively for the American public – a range of moral mandates including ban on pornography and abortion, ending same-sex marriage and unpicking radical gender ideology.
In characteristic style Donald Trump has distanced himself bullishly from Project 2025, a blunt denial that has of itself led many to suspect that he’s actually behind the initiative.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on his social media website, Truth Social.
“I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
For sure some of the proposals for overhauling defence, nuclear deterrence and environmental targets are at fairly substantially odds with what we know Donald Trump believes, but the really contentious moral recommendations for the recreation of an autocratic American Christian society concur closely with his long-stated ambitions and beliefs.
Whilst on the surface – and in the face of the wholesale societal decline the world is experiencing – the recreation of a certain type of national Christianity may seem attractive, it’s not a path that has ended in wholesome results in the past. Given the present unstable state of the American administration, and the divisions and partisanism that underlies American society, any attempt at the implementation of Project 2025 is most likely going to send America headlong into a bloody and violent revolution. And it is this fear that is throwing the hapless and distressed Joe Biden back onto podiums and into increasingly combative press conferences.
Given the two bleak choices facing US voters, you may wonder if there are any other options. Sadly, no – there’s Progressive activist Cornel West and ex-Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr, but neither has anything like enough support to challenge the two main candidates.
So it looks increasingly likely that on 6th November America may well wake to the news that the United States in once again in the hands of Donald Trump, and Project 2025 will be lurking not far behind. For some this may feel like Christian theology has reasserted itself in a land torn apart by secularism and relativism, but history has taught us that totalitarian state Christianity is a highly toxic creed that rarely evolves into anything resembling the principles taught by the carpenter of Galilee.
A Christian approach to politics is a form of active pacifism that is about not chasing power but living Christian values and letting God take care of the rest. It is also fundamentally about replacing fear with hope, and is not about having a fixation with electing the right person, but rather about becoming the right person ourselves.
In simple terms, in the coming months America will need to look not it its leaders, but to itself, for its savaltion.
Joseph Kelly is a Catholic writer and theologian