One of Donald Trump’s most consistent election messages is that Joe Biden, not he, is the threat to democracy. The New York Times has an excellent story explaining how this message, which Trump summarizes as “BAD” (Biden Against Democracy), is designed to neutralize Trump’s most important political weakness.
The article puts this strategy in the context of Trump’s lifelong habit of accusing his opponents of whatever Trump himself is doing in order to muddy the waters and foster cynicism. But there is another aspect of this argument the article does not consider: BAD is not only a Trumpian schoolyard taunt but also an argument that is being advanced by putatively serious conservative intellectuals.
The literal version of Trump’s argument — which casts Biden as an authoritarian tyrant who stole the election and is now hell-bent on imprisoning his opponent — is obviously promoted by his most enthusiastic supporters. But the main purpose of the claim is to turn the democracy question into a tie. Maybe Trump has been a bad boy (January 6 and all that), the argument will go, but Biden has also threatened democracy. Since both candidates are authoritarians, we might as well vote for the one who will support our favorite domestic policies.
This version of the argument is especially attractive to conservatives who have locked themselves into an anti-Trump posture but wish to create a permission structure to support him as the lesser evil.
The most enthusiastic source of support for this argument is the anti-anti-Trump right at traditional conservative organs like The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the National Review. Rich Lowry, NR’s editor-in-chief, has churned out a string of columns straining to make the case that Trump’s opponents are just as much to blame for authoritarianism as he is. One recent Lowry column insists that if Biden really cared about democracy, he’d quit the race. “If Joe Biden were, as a matter of principle, devoted to defending democracy at all costs,” he argues, “obviously the first thing he would do would be to step aside for some younger, more capable, less radioactive Democrat with a much better chance of beating Trump.” (Lowry does not entertain the obvious possibility that Biden genuinely, if perhaps erroneously, considers himself Trump’s strongest opponent.) Instead, he argues that Biden doesn’t really care much about saving democracy. So why should anybody else?
In another recent column, he concedes that Trump’s critics are “sincerely, and to some extent understandably, alarmed by his conduct after the 2020 election and how he’s branded his political comeback as a revenge tour.” But Lowry argues that they are therefore going to react to a potential Trump victory in undemocratic ways:
At least some portion of the Left will convince itself that only a color revolution can save the country.
Prior to the 2016 Trump–Clinton contest, one school of Trump supporters posited that it was the “Flight 93 election” — possibly the last chance to save the country. The consequences of failure were so awful that anything was justified to win. Now, that’s the way the Left feels, except Trump won his Flight 93 election, and Joe Biden could well lose his.
If so, there will be much to fear from democracy’s self-styled defenders.
So, you see, this hypothetical future of left-wing behavior that mimics Trump just shows that Trump is no worse than his enemies. Suppose I steal Lowry’s wallet, and when he calls me a thief, I point out that his angry rhetoric is a justification for stealing back my money — what else would you do against a thief? — I suppose he will agree that we are now moral equals with regard to theft.
George F. Will recently insisted in a column that “Joe Biden is, like Trump, an authoritarian recidivist mostly stymied by courts” and that “alarmism” over Trump’s contempt for democracy “distracts attention from the similarity of Trump’s and Biden’s disdain for legality.”
What is the authoritarian offense of Biden’s that renders him equal to Trump? I will let Will explain the despotic Biden actions that threaten the republic in all its bloody particulars:
Biden nominated Ann Carlson last March to be administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Two months later, when it was clear that the Senate would not confirm her, Biden withdrew the nomination. But less than five weeks after that, he named Carlson acting administrator. His impertinence would perhaps be limited, by the Vacancies Act, to 210 days, which would expire Dec. 26. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has held that the act prohibits “any person who has been nominated to fill any vacant office from performing that office’s duties in an acting capacity.”
Yes, you read that correctly. The equivalent of Trump openly threatening to lock up his enemies, use the military to crush protests, glorifying in violent attacks on his critics, deeming all elections he loses ipso facto stolen, and inciting a mob led by right-wing paramilitaries to storm the Capitol is … Biden allowing Anne Carlson to serve as acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Now, look. We can agree that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, like other federal agencies, should have a Senate-confirmed leader. And we can further agree that a system that allows presidents to use acting appointees to circumvent Senate confirmation — Will notes later in the column this problem has been ongoing since at least the 1990s — is broken and in need of reform.
But the idea that this now-routine approach to running the bureaucracy is remotely comparable to the behavior of a man who transparently idolizes dictators is not remotely tenable. It is not a way to hold Democrats to account for the normal failings of politicians. It is a way of running interference for Trump’s scheme to undermine the foundations of the republic. Its adherents should at least have the self-respect to stop posing as Trump critics and unmask themselves as water carriers for his own campaign message.
