Joe Biden: President, Or Senator?

The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller 

Joe Biden started out, it seemed, intending to be another Franklin Roosevelt. He had a major insurmountable obstacle, however. Roosevelt had a large majority in both the Senate and the House in 1932, and Biden has a bare majority in in the House in 2020, and an even split in the Senate. The tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris is necessary in case of a tie in the Senate, of which one is too many, especially lately.

Mr. Biden was a senator for thirty-six years, a vice-president for eight years, and he has been president for one year. Sadly for the American people, Biden thinks like a Senator, not like a president. He hopes to achieve consensus on all the major legislation he wants passed. For thirty-six years he was willing to try to schmooze legislation into passage. Unfortunately, schmoozing is not likely to work when spending bills in the trillions of dollars are being debated or when the John Lewis Voting Rights bill is being discussed (and scuttled) in the evenly-divided Senate.

Being a legislator and being a president involve antithetical skills. Legislators know they must work with others to create policy. Presidents know they must convince legislators to pass policy bills. In other words, chief executives must convince policy makers what particular policies must be made. Presidents must lead, rather than schmooze.

In the brief time Joe Biden has served as president, he has resorted to legislative inclinations rather than executive inclinations. He is too concerned with coaxing everyone on board and too little concerned with pulling or shoving everyone on board. His nature may be too kind and collaborative for the requirements the American presidency thrusts upon whoever holds that intimidating office.

Everyone in Congress and in America knowns where Joe Biden stands on every issue. But they do not see him coercing recalcitrant Republicans and two reluctant Democrats into legislative action. A deceased minister I knew often said, “The purpose of leaders is to lead.” That is the quintessential purpose of the American president.

Someone on the White House staff or in the Democratic caucuses of the U.S. Senate and House or in the presidential cabinet must convince Joe Biden he can no longer be the “Come, let us reason together” guy who lives uneasily at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Instead he must become the “Ve vill do it zis vey” guy who inspires others to agree that is the way to do it. Unless that happens soon, we will be confronted by a decent, kindly, avuncular man who was a very effective Senator for thirty-six years, but has not yet discovered how to be presidential. And the vexing political disorder of the present will last for three more painful years.

President Biden is taking many lumps at present, and that is unfortunate, particularly for him, but also for all of us. The course of his presidency may well be decided in how he conducts himself in the next few months.                                          – January 21, 2022

 

John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.