The president’s bait and switch

Joe Biden is president of the United States. His job is to execute his constitutional responsibilities, defending the country from enemies abroad, faithfully executing the laws at home, and leading Congress in formulating and passing a legislative program that will help us lead peaceful, just, and prosperous lives. The problem is that he was elected on one platform, but he changed the game once in office. Consequently, his presidency is now deeply unpopular with the American people.

Biden is now limping along with approval figures averaging 41 percent, and one poll recently was as low as 33 percent. Under such circumstances, a president certainly retains his office and the constitutional right to act within the limits of the law. Morally, however, he should be more mindful to lead by persuasion and to moderate his initiatives.

How did this happen? During his 2020 campaign, Biden presented himself as a moderate. Having served in the U.S. Senate for 36 years, he said he knew how to work across the aisle and move the country forward with a consensus government. In the same spirit, he promised to restore civility to our public discourse. No more mean tweets and scorching invective from the Oval Office. Biden seemed to be a nice man who would bring enough of us together that we could reimagine living with each other as a country. That was the narrative.

But after taking office, Biden tacked hard to the left, linking his bipartisan infrastructure bill to his multi-trillion-dollar and socially transformative Build Back Better bill, named after his signature campaign slogan. He campaigned on a plan to rebuild the economic engine that our pandemic response had wrecked.

What did he mean by “better?” Better than President Donald Trump had done? Better than it was before? Either way, the message was restorative, not transformative. Yet the legislation Biden supported was so radical that, though it was loved by the farthest left faction of his party, it could not muster a majority in the Senate and failed.

He also promised to end the pandemic. In an October 2020 debate, he proclaimed, “I’m going to shut down the virus, not the country.” His knockout blow against the COVID scourge was to get everyone vaccinated. But how has it ever been possible to get all Americans to do the same thing without coercing them into it? Paying taxes and wearing seatbelts, for example. So, with his “patience wearing thin,” the president turned to threaten tens of millions of people with job loss if they refused to be vaccinated. Because it was unimaginable that a majority in Congress would support this legislatively, he used a “workaround” through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this jiggery-pokery unconstitutional, so in the end, he could only mandate the vaccination of many healthcare workers, like nurses.

Only one year into his presidency, Biden is attempting an aggressively partisan governing agenda with the thinnest imaginable political standing: an average 55 percent disapproval rating in the polls, an evenly divided 50/50 Senate, and a Senate tie-breaking vice president who herself has the lowest approval rating of any vice president in living memory.

After the dramatic, complete, and irretrievable collapse of his legislative agenda and the judicial slap-down of the main offensive in his COVID War, instead of working with the whole Congress, he is now vainly attempting controversial police reform by executive order. In American politics, however, this is the loser’s option since executive orders, being a president’s directives on how to execute the laws, last only as long as a presidency does.

Beyond that, Biden has turned to shouting and pounding and scurrilous name-calling. In a desperate attempt to change the Senate rules to allow his sharply partisan election reform bill to squeak through, his rhetoric passed from vilifying into demonizing when he characterized the bill’s opponents of being akin to segregationists and enslavers.

Even God, in all his Creator power and knowledge, appeals to His foolish and wayward people, “Come now, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18). The Apostle Paul, Christ’s kingdom ambassador, says, “Knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others” (2 Corinthians 5:11).

You cannot govern a democratic country with merely the letter of the law and the sword. “I’m president. I have enough votes in Congress. Obey!” This is no way to treat a free people. Biden knows better than this.