Duty to Our Country

President Biden takes responsibility to stave off disaster in 2024

“We’re running against an election denier-in-chief. Trump’s not even hiding the ball anymore.” (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

If you were 81 years old, would you want four more years of one of the most pressure-packed jobs in the world, essentially on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day? Wouldn’t you want more time to spend with—if you’re lucky enough—your large, loving family? Would you feel you still have something to prove personally, especially if you’ve already served 36 years in the Senate, eight years as vice president and four years as president?

This week President Joe Biden answered all of these questions in two simple sentences, explaining why he’s in it to win it one more time. It’s a statement that told me his purpose is nothing less than performing his duty to his country.

“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” Biden said Tuesday at a Boston-area fundraiser. “But we cannot let him win.”

Many observers—nervous about Biden’s age, approval ratings, early head-to-head polling, the lingering impact of inflation—focused on what the president said Wednesday when asked if any other Democrat could beat Donald Trump. “Probably 50 of them,” Biden said. “I’m not the only one who could defeat him. But I will defeat him.”

What I heard, from the one man who has already proved he can beat Trump, is that he feels the outcome of this race is his responsibility. Obviously, no one can operate without an ego at that level; I’m the last person to define Biden as a selfless saint without earthly desires.

But I was deeply heartened by his comment on Tuesday because it told me he’s dedicated to doing everything he can to help the country stave off the nightmarish disaster of a malignant insurrectionist bent on taking power to save his own skin, pursue retribution, further enrich himself—and end the American democratic experiment.

This led me to look across the political landscape of this week to wonder who else is (and is not) focusing on duty to country first—that is, a country dedicated to and defined by the U.S. constitution, democracy and the rule of law.

Let’s consider first what happened on Monday when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow interviewed Liz Cheney, the former top House Republican and co-chair of the January 6th committee, who lost her seat after she began speaking out and voted to impeach Trump.

In an unusual pre-interview intro, Maddow elaborately detailed how diametrically opposed she is to her guest (who was there to discuss her just-released book, Oath and Honor). “I disagree with Liz Cheney about everything,” Maddow said. “My whole adult life on everything in politics, I would not just say that Liz Cheney and I were on different proverbial teams, I would say we are from different proverbial planets.” And yet:

…in civic terms, in sort of American citizenship terms, I think it's really important how much we disagree. It's important how far apart we are in every policy issue imaginable. It is important that Liz Cheney is infinity and I am negative infinity on the ideological number line. It's important because that tells you how serious and big something has to be to put us, to put me and Liz Cheney, together on the same side of something in American life.”

And yet, at this moment, she and Cheney are strongly connected by their desire to correct Trump’s lies about election fraud, expose the truth of January 6, restore the centuries-old tradition of peacefully transferring power, combat the danger that Trump could regain power and defend democracy.

“Those of us on the right, in this moment,” Cheney told Maddow, “have a particularly great responsibility and duty because this threat has emerged from the right…It’s partly why, right now, why I have been so, so disappointed with what I’ve seen from other members of my party in their unwillingness to step up.”

These are times that produce strange bedfellows. Note Maddow’s words of praise while speaking with host Lawrence O’Donnell right after her interview.

The reason there are so few heroes is because, in reality, when [the need for] heroism comes knocking on your door, it’s usually easier to pretend you’re asleep. It’s usually easier to let things happen and hope somebody else will take the rap. Here’s somebody who saw it clear-eyed and did it, knowing exactly what it would mean.

And then there’s that other bunch, who make it clear that a commitment to democracy and the rule of law don’t top their list of concerns. Not in the slightest. Consider a few snapshots:

• Mike Johnson, House speaker and Christian nationalist, who keeps reminding us that he’s no mere mortal, no humble public servant put there to embrace all religions and protect the separation between church and state. No, this smug election denier, second in line to the presidency, who told us when he was handed the gavel that he was ordained by God, insisted this week in a speech to Christian nationalist lawmakers at the Museum of the Bible that his selection as speaker was God choosing the “new Moses.” And, after “13 people ran for the post…the Lord kept telling me to ‘wait, wait, wait.’ So I waited, I waited. And then at the end…the Lord said, ‘Now step forward.’”

• Kash Patel, a former Trump advisor, Defense Department chief of staff and touted as CIA director material, told Steve Bannon Tuesday that when the MAGA crowd retakes power they will pursue an aggressive vendetta agains critics in the media. “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” Patel said with thinly veiled pleasure. “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections—we’re going to come after you.”

• Kevin McCarthy, the country’s shortest-serving House speaker, decided he didn’t have any principle worth sticking around to fight for, not even to ensure that his party’s slim majority would hold up. He announced on Wednesday, two months after losing the speakership, that he was getting out of Congress at year’s end—before the end of his term. “I have decided to depart the House at the end of this year to serve America in new ways,” he wrote anemically in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. The day before, interim House Speaker and bowtie-wearing Patrick McHenry also announced he’s getting out. So much for commitment to America.

• And there was Trump himself, who was given multiple prompts by Sean Hannity during a Fox News town hall Tuesday night to pretend that he really does care about the Constitution and democracy and isn’t on a sick, slick, self-serving path to install himself as dictator, if he possibly could. “Do you in any way have any plans whatsoever, if re-elected president, to abuse power?” Hannity asked. “To break the law? To use the government to go after people?” When Trump failed to answer the question directly, Hannity followed up minutes later, trying to help: “You are promising America tonight, you would never abuse this power as retribution against anybody?” Trump responded with his faux humor: “Except for Day One…We’re closing the border. And we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.” So very funny. So very ugly.

Back in Boston Tuesday, Biden said of his 2020 campaign that “I don’t think [voters] thought I was exaggerating about the threat to democracy. And thank God, because of people like you, we won in 2020…But now, I don’t think anyone doubts our democracy is even more at risk in 2024. 

“And I’m serious,” he continued. “Because this time, we’re running against an election denier-in-chief. Trump’s not even hiding the ball anymore. He’s telling us exactly what he wants to do. He’s making no bones about it.”

In his wrap-up, Biden reminded the audience about his basic belief in America and the essential duty to provide equal opportunity.

We don’t believe America is a dark and negative nation, a nation of carnage driven by anger, fear and hatred, or revenge. We believe we’re a hopeful, optimistic nation. We’ve always been—as much as we disagreed—driven by a simple proposition that everybody deserves a fair shot. No one is guaranteed—just a fair shot. 

This will be a year when the contrasts will be more vivid than ever before. As we approach 2024, we can expect to see the fault lines and points of conflict intensify—between the forces of darkness and those of light, between Americans who are ready to toss it all away and those who think it’s worth fighting for, between cultists who think their loyalty is to Donald Trump and those who know their duty is to a democratic America, the Constitution, justice and the rule of law.

While the number of months to the next election is shrinking—and anxiety is rising—don’t doubt we still have time to achieve a positive outcome.

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