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It was shocking enough that Donald Trump picked one of his daughters’ fathers-in-law to be US ambassador to France and another as his Middle East envoy. The first, Charles Kushner, father of Jared, Ivanka Trump’s husband, is also a convicted felon.
Fear of Trump turning America into a banana republic is not outlandish. But Joe Biden has robbed Democrats of the chance to occupy higher ground by becoming the first US president in history to pardon an offspring.
The timing of Biden’s blanket act of immunity for his son Hunter was unfortunate. It enabled Trump to distract attention from his nepotism. As a matter of principle it was also lamentable. The rule of law in America looks like a game in which the well connected always seem to have a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Whoever else Trump targets with his powers of retribution, Hunter Biden is now off that list. But history will not skate over Joe Biden’s role in enabling Trump’s return to power. That Biden’s help was unwitting is no excuse. Biden was president for four years and failed to hold Trump to account for trying to overturn US democracy.
Other countries, notably Brazil, which could once have genuinely been called a banana republic, are able to enforce their laws. Its Trumpian former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been banned from running for high office until 2030 for attempting to overturn his 2022 election defeat. The best Biden could do was give life to that adage that if you come at the king, you had best not miss. He missed Trump by a mile.
But it is worse than that. Biden clung on to his dreams of a second term long enough to mess things up for his party. Kamala Harris is taking the lion’s share of the blame for having lost to Trump last month. But the bigger responsibility lies with Biden. By refusing to step down until late July, he robbed the Democratic party of the chance to hold a primary.
Harris had barely 100 days to mount a coherent alternative to America’s most protean figure in decades. That she came within a point or two of Trump’s tally is a feat. That she should probably not have been nominee in the first place is Biden’s doing. Not only did he stubbornly remain in place until far too late, his endorsement ensured Harris would have no competition.
There is no doubt that Biden’s family story is tragic. In any context, a father’s unconditional love for a deeply flawed son is moving. Hunter Biden was targeted by Republicans as a way to get at his father. Most Americans who lied on their gun registration form about using addictive substances would be given a rap on the knuckles. Hunter was facing a jail sentence until his father pardoned him.
Yet the 10-year scope of Biden’s pardon (dating from 2014) is designed to cover the time when Hunter tried to monetise the fact that his father was vice-president. Hunter Biden had nothing except his last name to commend him to business partners in Ukraine, China and elsewhere. His selling point was access to power. There is no evidence that Biden did anything to help his son’s business. But there is also none that he tried to prevent such an unwise venture in the first place.
It is no coincidence that Biden’s pardon followed Trump’s announcement of Kash Patel — a ruthless Trump loyalist with no other credentials — as his next director of the FBI. Patel has repeatedly vowed to jail Trump’s foes. As America’s chief policeman with huge investigative authority, he will be Trump’s sword of vengeance. Memories of the ruin that J Edgar Hoover’s FBI brought to so many careers during the McCarthyite red scare and beyond are suddenly relevant.
Hunter Biden’s name appears on that enemies list. But so do dozens of others. Biden might also pardon colleagues and allies for crimes that exist in the imagination of Patel and Trump. Maybe that will be his final act. But he has already sullied the process. He has spent years telling Americans that no man is above the law. The daylight between Biden and Trump is now obscured by fog.
Trump’s uncanny skill as a politician is to tap into people’s cynicism. Rather than upholding American ideals, he appeals to those who see them as a hypocritical sham. In that quest, Trump owes his opponents thanks, not persecution.
Though it is overused, it is hard to forget WB Yeats’s line that “the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity”. Those words capture both Biden and Trump. The rule of law in America is about to receive the mother of all stress tests. If it fails, Biden will have played a role in weakening the guardrails.
edward.luce@ft.com