It looks like Joe Biden will be inheriting a presidency with very little left standing in the way of rank authoritarianism. Donald Trump, with the assent of Republicans in Congress and a corrupt Attorney General, spent the last four years successfully crashing through many of the informal guardrails that once stood in the way of a criminal and authoritarian executive. Joe Biden could, if he chose, step into that office and use this power to enact a whole slew of liberal policies through executive fiat.
The question we must now ask ourselves is whether that’s the best choice.
There’s little doubt that the country and the world face multiple dire threats which require immediate and radical action to mitigate: The two most pressing are climate change and healthcare. There’s also little doubt that a Mitch McConnell Senate would block every attempt by President Biden to deal with these crises through legislative means. His only option will be to abuse presidential powers.
But knowing that Biden COULD use his executive power to push an ideology that is anathema to Republicans, or to steal their prized Supreme Court supermajority through expanding its membership, might motivate Republicans to join Democrats in passing laws (and perhaps even Constitutional amendments) that would forever limit the power of the president. And Donald Trump has shown that we quite obviously need limits like that very badly.
With Joe Biden’s victory, Democrats now face a dilemma: Do we fix the country, or do we fix the government? Which is the greater threat? Should we leverage an authoritarian presidency to address climate change and healthcare unilaterally? Or should we leverage the threat of that option to instead wrangle support for fixing the Office of the President?
We cannot do both, because the two choices contradict one another. We can either exploit an authoritarian presidency, or we can fix it.
I don’t have an answer to this conundrum. I’m soliciting a conversation. Which is the greater threat? Which path will leave future generations with the greatest chance of prosperity (or just plain survival)?