Normalizing The Rogue Presidency

Saying what FDR would have done is a lot like saying what would Jesus have done, both because nobody knows and because it can’t be proven false since neither FDR nor Jesus is around to say otherwise. But after four years of a rogue presidency where courts were denigrated for not serving their master, where law and the Constitution were routinely ignored, either out of basic ignorance or a more Nixonian arrogance, Biden’s White House counsel and the courts had no doubt that the CDC did not have the authority to issue an eviction moratorium.

In the face of an expired moratorium, a recessed Congress, Rep. Cori Bush embarrassing the administration by sleeping on the Capital steps and a formerly-respected Harvard law professor who spent the past four years disgracing himself with absurd legalish claims, but who now manufactured a nonsensical theory to distinguish a new moratorium from the clearly illegal one worthy of Rudy Giuliani’s and the Krakens, Biden and the White House shut their eyes tight and dove off the ledge.

President Biden knew it. He knew it was a crackpot scheme backed by extremely motivated believers desperately seeking an excuse to rationalize why torture of enemy combatants an eviction moratorium was constitutional. He knew it but he just didn’t care.

Why is the eviction moratorium constitutional, I asked the president. Biden told me "I can't guarantee you the court won’t rule that we don't have that authority but at least we'll have the ability to, if we have to appeal, to keep this going for a month-at least. I hope longer." pic.twitter.com/sBTOLmbPDV

— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) August 5, 2021

The position appears to be that, even though he knows it’s unlawful, this is the outcome he wants and he will do it for as long as he can get away with it. Others who similarly want this outcome tout the rationalizations used to justify it. But the permutations of an executive branch unconstrained by law or Constitution should be obvious.

After four years of a president whose every move, lawful or flagrantly unlawful as happened regularly, was ripped to shreds, his replacement is demonstrating that he’s no less inclined to break the law to accomplish the outcomes he prefers, or at least the outcomes he feels he must achieve to avoid being burned at the stake by his own party.

And the same people who screamed constantly about how awful Trump was are now apologists for Biden. It’s not that they were against a lawless dictator. It’s that they want the dictator to be their dictator.

Biden’s statement may be as cynical as any since Nixon.

“…but at least we’ll have the ability to, if we have to appeal, to keep this going for a month-at least. I hope longer.”

When he says “we’ll have the ability to,” it stinks of Andrew Jackson’s purported reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Worcester v. Georgia.

John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.

The courts may have said this was unlawful, but what are they going to do about it? And when the district judges before whom the already filed suits come rule against the CDC’s defiance of the courts, “if we have to appeal, to keep this going for a month at least,” Biden is saying he will persist in pushing unlawful action, knowing before, during and after, that it’s unlawful, because the only thing he cares about is the outcome.

If it was wrong when Nixon did it, it’s still wrong. If it was wrong when Bush did it, it’s still wrong. If it was wrong when Trump did it, it’s still wrong. And when Biden does it, it’s still wrong.

The problem is that this arises in the context of the CDC’s eviction moratorium, but that’s merely the nuts and bolts of the moment, of critical importance to small minds who fail to comprehend principles and instead latch on for dear life to irrelevant and petty distinctions that somehow rot otherwise working minds into believing that this time it’s different, this violation of everything we once held dear won’t cause a nation to slide down the slippery slope into the abyss.

When you desperately need an excuse to do what you desperately want to do, you’ll believe whatever you need to believe. But it’s a lie, a deception desperate people tell themselves to not feel like the slimy, unprincipled scum they are.

From the outset of this republic, it was clear that the judiciary was the Least Dangerous Branch, and we’ve been reminded of it ever since. Yet, for most of our history, they’ve somehow endured, by not pushing the Executive or the public too hard, too fast, too far. But now they are maligned as partisan by politicians, left-wing academics and pundits, in an effort to neuter the judiciary’s legitimacy and provide cover for ignoring its vitality as a co-equal branch of government and doing what they want despite knowing, without any serious doubt, that they are engaging in lawless conduct. Once the law, the Constitution, ceases to matter, you can do anything as long as you have the support of your tribe and the clout to prevent the other tribe from taking control.

The irony in this instance is that the eviction moratorium kicks the can down the road apiece, but fixes nothing. The hope is that buying a couple more months will give states time to distribute COVID relief monies to tenants to prevent mass evictions. Maybe it will, and maybe it will provide some relief to some tenants and landlords. If so, then problem solved: No harm, no foul.

Except there is a foul. There is a president who decided that he can ignore the law, the Constitution, the courts, when he wants to. For those who believe that as long as they agree with the outcome, the means of ignoring the law is acceptable, bear in mind that supporters of every president before Biden who acted similarly felt the same.

There are two differences this time, first that we thought we were coming off the nadir of Trump’s lawlessness to a new administration that might not pursue an agenda you preferred, but at least was not flagrantly disrespectful of the law and the judicial branch of government. We could disagree with his policy positions, but at least the disagreement would be within normal parameters and not whether he just blew off the law when it got in the way.

The second is that now that the Biden administration has crossed the line into a rogue presidency, acquiescing to the worst of his party’s demands upon the excuse of a disgraced former “scholar” to enable federal agency bureaucrats to dictate how a nation will conduct itself, there are no limits to the “bold and transformative” damage he can do. To the extent Biden hid behind law to refuse the most outrageous and unseemly demands of his fringe left wing, he’s now given away his cover. Once a president goes rogue, the rest is just dickering over price.