Joe Biden is a terrible person to be leading our nation. He is a rank opportunist, perpetual flip-flopper, and demonstrated plagiarist. He has been caught lying about matters big and small throughout his career, has engaged in obvious low-level corruption (and plausible high-level), yet none of these issues have seemed to hamper his political or financial progress. He is, in other words, your stereotypical career politician.
All those issues aside — issues which any honest observer should admit — the biggest problem I have with Joe Biden is his claiming to be “a devout Catholic” and supporting the evil of abortion. He says he believes in Church rule privately but not publicly. But what one earth could this mean? Either he believes what the Church teaches about the dignity of every human life is true, or it isn’t. If it’s true, then what principled reason could he hold for not advocating that position in the public sphere, as many politicians do? It’s not as if he needs to thump the Catholic catechism at his political rallies — the pro-life position can be argued from entirely philosophical and scientific premises. Nor would he have to become a republican: one of the greatest disappointments of my life is seeing the party of my grandparents (whom I admired so much because of their commitment to human dignity) become so radically opposed to the pro-life position, driving me and many other moderately minded individuals to side with politicians (namely mainstream republicans) I would otherwise not want to be associated with. Pelosi, for example, recently sneered at republicans for being so uncompromising on the abortion issue, as if this is anything but a compliment. Some issues are so morally pressing they demand our entire effort to combat. This is as true for the dignity of the unborn person as it would be (and was) for slavery: the moral gravity of the situation makes it the pre-eminent (though admittedly not only) issue, since all other human rights are derivative from our inherent dignity as human persons, which entails that most fundamental right to life. If that bottom level right to life is infringed, it is hard to seriously entertain rights talk elsewhere, either with regard to privacy, property, healthcare, economic prosperity, or what have you.
Now, if on the other hand, what the Church teaches isn’t true, and Biden knows it isn’t true, then he is a phony for believing it, and perhaps only pretends to believe it for political gain. There is no good look here for Joe Biden — either he is a fool or a scoundrel. He is unfit to be President of the United States.
– Pat
PS – Before anybody engages whataboutism regarding President Trump, remember that 1) Trump is no longer president, and 2) I have made it consistently clear where I thought President Trump did a commendable job and where he didn’t. Trump, for example, did good on judge appointments, peace deals, economic growth, promoting the dignity of the unborn, and not starting any new foreign wars. These are not insignificant accomplishments, and most of them are accomplishments everybody should celebrate. However, Trump failed in his often idiotic and inarticulate rhetoric, not being pro-life enough, surrounding himself with foolish and occasionally corrupt advisers/lawyers, enacting draconian immigration policies, not breaking up the Big Tech oligarchs, not doing more to protect freedom of speech/expression, the list continues. At this point, I’d rank his presidency somewhere along the lines of a C or C-, which is the highest I’ve given any president in my lifetime, but far from what I believe our great nation is capable of.
Either way, what I wish people would do more often when it comes to political candidates, is, rather than fall lockstep with the party line and uncritically assume everything your preferred candidate does is automatically awesome, evaluate them issues by issue, policy by policy. I cannot think of any other meaningful way to assess a political candidate. And, to be fair myself, there are certain policies that, if Joe Biden manages to get them done, I will gladly credit him for and be appreciative of. Pretty much anything he could do to fix our healthcare mess would be enormously welcome, and given how much healthcare reform has been promoted by the democratic platform, I will consider it an egregious failure if we do not see considerable progress along those lines now that Dems have the presidency, senate, and house. There is no excuse. Get it done!
PPS – Remarkable statement from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on Joe Biden’s inauguration. Worth reading in full.