Political scientist Julia Azari has a piece worth reading from Good Politics/Bad Politics regarding the ongoing discussion of Biden’s age, We’re Learning the Wrong Lessons from Biden’s Decision to Run in 2024.
To summarize, before I provide some excerpts and additional commentary, the bottom line is that we have weak political parties that place too much emphasis on the president/candidate over the institutional power of parties. (Stop me if you have heard this one before–well, don’t stop me even though I know regular readers have heard this before). Further, if we want to figure out how to avoid these kinds of problems in the future, the real solutions are about structures and institutions, not hoping that the right people behave the right way at the right time.
It’s also more productive to think about Biden’s almost-renomination in institutional terms. I made this argument last year, as the heated primary contest among Biden, Dean Phillips, and “uncommitted” raged on. Parties have learned the lesson that competitive primaries are risky and basically not done when there’s a sitting president running for reelection. The accounts of the process by which Biden stepped down really illustrate the weakness of national parties and the resulting complexity of the nomination process. There’s a formal process for the nomination, but it’s governed and buffeted by informal rules and expectations. The channels by which Biden was pressured to step down and Harris was selected to succeed him on the ticket were also informal, with influential players working largely out of public view.
This is not dissimilar to things I have noted repeatedly, including the fact that a sitting president is essentially the leader of their party and that, therefore, it is highly unlikely that a challenger would emerge in the primary should the president (or, really, when the president) seeks re-election to a second term.
It is important to remember that the party shapes around the presidential candidate/the elected president, and not the other way around.
So-called “Biden people” seem to be at the center of many of these dramatic accounts. The problem is presented as one in which Biden’s most loyal political advisors and allies refused to face the truth about his health and capacities, and to be honest with the public (more about that in a bit). Another way to think about this problem is that the larger political party – a loose conglomeration of influential players like Nancy Pelosi – had to directly confront a separate presidential organization. A presidentially-led campaign operation has the candidate the center, surrounded by people who are loyal and owe their political careers to him. This may why we see the First Lady figure so heavily into this story – she’s one of the few people in the inner circle who has something like an equal partnership with the president. This is actually a very strange way to do party politics, with a parallel, president-centered organization competing with, and within, the party organization. Such a structure really impedes the ability of the party to balance out presidential power, and pretty much guarantees we’ll run into this problem again.
Note what Azari is highlighting here are the incentives that drive people and the competing groups created by the lack of formal structures (as noted by my emphasis above).
Her observation about the role of the First Lady is worth considering as well. It shows not only how a person who is only an informal participant in party politics has a great deal of power and influence, but also underscores that her power comes from her connection to the President. This again illustrates the weakness of the formal party and the importance of the candidate/officeholder.
Remember that to get Biden off the ticket really required Biden deciding to remove himself.
Back to Azari.
…we should also ask why the incentives to act with more integrity aren’t there, and how we ended up in a place where “the president’s people” – separate from the accountability that parties can provide – have so much sway at all. The “cover up” frame lets our atrophied and distorted institutions off the hook. Accounts that emphasize the role of individuals point to solutions in which a different cast of characters – not serious structural change – can address the failures of democratic health that we face. That kind of thinking is what led to the Biden presidency, and the dilemmas it produced, in the first place.
The bolded sentence comports with the way I have discussed this (and other) challenges within our politics. As Azari notes in a paragraph preceding the one I quoted, “[The cover-up narrative] offers a story of conflict and morality, placing individual failures at the center of the narrative.” The goal, however, should be to think about how the rules and structures (i.e., the institutions) of our politics shape incentives and direct and/or bind undesirable behavior. The focus solely on the behavior of individuals ignores what allowed those behaviors to be dispositive in the first place.
There are two other side notes I want to make as inspired by her piece.
The first is about the “cover-up” narrative.
Media framing, however, seems to have zeroed in on the story of the “cover up.” Plenty of people have pointed out that this was approximately as covered up as a Super Bowl halftime show.
This is pretty much how I feel about the basics of this story. That Joe Biden was old was not an unknown factor. Indeed, a stroll through the OTB archive provides the following (all by James Joyner, all in reaction to daily headlines, news coverage, and polls).
- March 2023: Biden Too Old! Trump Pretty Old Too!
- October 2023: Biden Is Old and Feeble, Says Old, Feeble Man.
- November 2023: Old Man Biden and Young Would-Be Voters.
- January 2024: Biden and Trump Are Apparently Old.
- January 2024: The Old Man and the Felon.
- February 2024: Old Man Biden.
I mean, as I recall, Biden’s age was a constant topic of discussion. And, I would note, that discussion led to him leaving the race for the White House in July of 2024.
The point about July of 2024 needs to be underscored. The ultimate result of various actors observing Biden, and catalyzed by the debate performance, produced the appropriate outcome.* He decided not to run for re-election. One can argue that this should have been done earlier or that there was information that the public should have had, and that may well be the case. But when dealing with human beings, especially under the parameters we are discussing, it should be no surprise whatsoever that is was a slow and difficult process up and until the moment that it wasn’t.
Now, I understand that the rejoinder is going to be that he was worse off behind the scenes than we were being told. This may well be the case, and while I am not thrilled about it, I understand, as I have written before, what the incentives within what Azari calls “the president’s people” would be. To be clear, those incentives would have been to rationalize the situation in as positive a light for Biden as possible.
Again, to Azari’s point, and similar ones I have made elsewhere: if you want to avoid these kinds of problems, fix the structural context. Beating up on Biden and his allies may make some Democrats feel better so that they can blame the 2024 election results on something, and it makes Republicans feel good because it allows them to distract from the mess that their president is making.**
To that last point, I agree with Azari (and this is the second side-point I wanted to make).
The obvious perspective is that the most demanding or perplexing Constitutional crisis [as a result of an aging Biden] would still be much less threatening to the health of the republic than what has happened so far in a second Trump term. (Some recent examples: arresting a member of Congress for protesting, cuts to federal weather preparedness systems leading to unnecessary death and destruction).
Indeed, I would rather be trying to figure out how to deal with an aging, cancer-diagnosed Biden than having White House officials muse about suspending habeas corpus and relishing the rendition of people to torture prisons without due process of law. I would rather have to wonder if the 25th Amendment needed to be invoked than to have the entire basis of the post-WWII economy carelessly wrecked while also threatening the dollar as a major reserve currency, and the loss of all the power and privilege that entails.
I could go on, but the point should be clear.
*I know some may argue that Biden should have stayed in the race. I can see that perspective, but I do think his bowing out was the right move. I cannot prove a counterfactual, but I think he would have lost as well, and likely worse than Harris did. I think that whatever energy the Democrats had going into November of 2024 was because of the new candidate, but that the inflation factor had sealed the deal, and that the incumbent party was going to lose.
**And it is free and easy programming for cable news, the same way HRC’s emails were featured on air years after the 2016 elections were in the book.
