President Biden’s exit is a classy exercise in the limits of power – and a return to older liberal principles

Liberalism and democracy happen to be two things which begin by having to do with each other, and end by having, so far as tendencies are concerned, meanings that are mutually antagonistic.  Democracy and Liberalism are two answers to two completely different questions.

Democracy answers this question – “who ought to exercise the public power?”  The answer it gives is – the exercise of public power belongs to the citizens as a body.

But this question does not touch on what should be the realm of public power.  It is solely concerned with determining to whom such power belongs.  Democracy proposes that we all rule, that is, that we are all sovereign in social acts.

Liberalism, on the other hand, answers this other question – “regardless of who exercises the public power, what should its limits be?”  The answer it gives is – “whether the public power is exercised by the autocrat or by the people, it cannot be absolute; the individual has rights which are over and above any interference by the state.” This, then, tends to limit the intervention of the public power.[1]

On this day, President Biden repudiated Hobbesian thinking (so incarnated by Trump, who is a slave to his passions), namely the famous refrain about the “general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death.”[2]  Instead, by stepping down from the Democratic ticket, Biden demonstrated to America, if not the world, that all power should have its limits, at its heart an old principle of liberalism.

This stands in direct contrast to Trump’s desperate behaviour leading up to January 6^th and to the recent US Supreme Court decision in favour of presidential “absolute immunity” (which shamelessly was intended to protect Trump).  Apparently, six of nine justices had forgotten all legal precedent, plus the historical fact the Americans had fought a Revolution against a dreaded English King.  Hidden in the revolutionary slogan “No taxation without representation” was John Locke’s case for “the Consent of the People.”[3]  All this, of late, has been conveniently shoved aside by the Republicans (so-called), along with Lord Acton’s forgotten maxim: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

By stepping down, Biden is also making an implicit case for term limits for justices on the Supreme Court.  He demonstrates humility and an absence of entitlement, qualities which do not seem so very apparent elsewhere, for example, in the many ethical lapses at that Court.  And Biden appears to have learned from Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s example. Her fatal misjudgment not to step down when she was nudged to do so during Obama’s first term of office contributed in many ways to the present-day crises.

On the broader scale, Biden’s exit from the Democratic race speaks volumes about American democracy, once again a beacon, which thrives on competition. How will the autocrats of the world censor Biden’s grace?  The American spirit of innovation? Biden has publicly acknowledged limits on his own strength, and on the authority of the presidency, which should stand apart from his remarkable sense of moderation.[4]  On the other hand, President Xi had authorized a change in China’s constitution to make his third term possible.  Putin is approaching Stalin’s length of term in power.  Lukashenko has subjected the people of Belarus to 30 years in his grip.  Clearly there is only one person (or maybe two, now) unfit for office in America: Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance.

 

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[1] José Ortega y Gasset, Invertebrate Spain, tr. Mildred Adams (London: Allen & Unwin, 1937), pp. 125,126.

[2] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. A.P. Martinich (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), p. 75. [Part I, Chapter XI, Section 2]

[3] Thomas G. West, “Forward” in Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, ed. Thomas G. West (Carmel, Indiana: Liberty Fund, 1996), p. xxvi.  See also John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. and intro. by Mark Goldie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010), p. 13.

[4] John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ed., Cary J. Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 206.