This week, I look at what President Biden must do to protect our democracy from collapse, pick the distinguished person of the week and share something different.of my lifetime, and arguably ever, has changed the structure of our Constitution. The adage “no one is above the law” no longer applies to the president. In our constitutional system, the president was never intended to be a king. That was the entire rationale for the Revolutionary War.
I simply cannot abide the majority’s senseless discarding of a model of accountability for criminal acts that treats every citizen of this country as being equally subject to the law — as the Rule of Law requires. That core principle has long prevented our Nation from devolving into despotism. Yet the Court now opts to let down the guardrails of the law for one extremely powerful category of citizen: any future President who has the will to flout Congress’s established boundaries.
The urgency of defeating felon and former president Donald Trump, author of the insurrection for which he may never be punished, is hard to quantify.. Those who rushed to call for him to step down without poll evidence to substantiate their predictions of disaster and without affording him the chance to course correct acted irresponsibly and arguably only made the dilemma worse.
Biden needs to deliver vibrant appearances, conduct town halls and give tough interviews on this subject, removing doubt as to his fitness and electability. Hiswas a solid start. He looked and sounded strong, but he needs to be freed from the teleprompter and to speak easily at length about critical topics. His planned interview on Friday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, if it goes well, will help soothe anxious Democrats.
If Biden cannot appear in a free-flowing setting to erase doubts, he is obligated to make way for Harris to accept the nomination. It would be unconscionable and foolhardy for Democratic elites to pluck someone else out of a field of unvetted candidates and skip over the first African American female vice president. If earnest Democrats feel that Biden’s retirement is the best option, it behooves them to rally around Harris, making the transition as smooth as possible.