Profiles in (a Lack of) Courage

Photo by R. Michael Jenkins, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By Mark Mamerow

The chaotic transfer of Presidential power is complete, and the new administration has settled into its legislative agenda. The ratio of tweets and outrages in the news from DC has diminished. Politics has settled into its familiar pattern of total polarization. So, with the Democratic administration in place, and racking up Congressional victories, it’s time to contemplate how President Joseph R. Biden rose to power. Specifically, let’s take a look at the role of “political courage” in Biden’s career. 

American political journalists mythologize political courage. Even more enthusiastically, they revile political cowardice—the unwillingness of politicians to sacrifice their careers at the altar of speaking “truth to power”. But while it’s easy to identify acts of political cowardice, actual acts of genuine political courage occur so infrequently as to render the term an oxymoron. Re-election and the maintenance of political power are Job One for any elected official. By definition, an act of political courage places an office holder at odds with his or her constituents, and voters have not been known to be particularly responsive to actions they perceive as in opposition to their interests. The typical reward for any such courage is, as Churchill coined it, the “Order of the Boot”. Among the political players who have advanced to the national stage, political Darwinian selection has virtually eliminated any willing to stick their necks out.

We were reminded throughout the 2020 Presidential election that Joe Biden has spent forty-seven years in Washington. All that time without fully resolving racism, world hunger, or Chinese intellectual property theft!  A careful overview of Biden’s career reveals several points where he found himself in the crucible of public opinion—put in the position of demonstrating political courage—or ducking his head and going with the crowd. Experienced political observers will not be surprised that “courageous” wouldn’t be the first adjective to come to mind in describing Biden’s behavior.

In the early 2000s, Biden served as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with ample opportunity to publicly state his position on George W. Bush’s war. Like most mainstream Democrats, Biden buckled to the public’s thirst for 9/11 revenge, and voted to authorize Bush’s use of force in Iraq. Though popular at the time, the authorization of force was a foreign policy mistake that the US is still trying to recover from. Of course, during Biden’s 2020 Presidential run, he rewrote history to claim that he only voted to authorize force in order to strengthen Bush’s negotiating hand. Not quite, Joe.  Your own quote at the time puts the lie to this fiction: “There’s a lot of us who voted for giving the president the authority to take down Saddam Hussein if he didn’t disarm. And there are those who believe, at the end of the day, even though it wasn’t handled all that well, we still have to take him down.”   

Biden did have company—Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were both prominent Dems who took the same safe route. For Kerry, that vote ultimately rendered his presidential challenge moot. He was against it before he was for it! And Hillary’s lack of courage bit her in the ass when it enabled a challenger named Barack Obama to defeat her in the 2008 Presidential primary. (Note that as an Illinois State Senator, Obama never had to take a stand on Iraq.)   

But the biggest challenge to Biden’s political courage occurred in 1991, in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas. A little-known former Justice Department aide named Anita Hill had submitted written testimony, explicitly accusing Thomas of egregious sexual harassment. Biden, as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had no interest in making this testimony public.  The “optics”, as we refer to them now, of Democrats opposing a black Supreme Court nominee over sexual misbehavior, were forbidding. Black voters, then as now, made up a major part of the Democratic base, and Biden had no interest in poking a stick into the hornets’ nest of a racially charged nomination hearing.

Events spun out of Biden’s control, however, when NPR judicial reporter Nina Totenberg made the testimony public. Biden and the other Democrats controlling the Senate had no choice but to invite Anita Hill to testify. As Totenberg pointed out in a recent interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, Hill was also not excited about going public with her testimony. She would have preferred that the Judiciary Committee act upon her testimony as written. And she has never forgiven Nina Totenberg for essentially forcing her into the witness box.

Joe Biden and the other—all white and all male—Senators made a hash out of Anita Hill’s appearance. They aggressively questioned her veracity and generally treated her as a hostile witness. Republicans on the committee openly attempted to discredit her, some going so far as to turn the tables and accuse her of “erotomania”.  Biden’s decisions as Chairman were inept and insensitive. He allowed Clarence Thomas to testify both before and after Hill. And worst of all, he buried the testimony of several other women who had also faced harassment from Thomas. Ultimately, Clarence Thomas was approved by the Judiciary Committee, and was confirmed by full Senate vote to the Supreme Court, where he still resides, nearly 30 years later.

The point here isn’t to trash Biden’s performance in a highly pressurized political situation. But consider the role of “political courage” in the controversy. Biden showed a complete lack of courage. Rather than standing up for the rights of a courageous female employee who had been mistreated by a powerful work superior, he effectively threw her—and all working women—under the bus, in order to salvage his relationship with African American voters. Politicians aren’t plaster saints. They aren’t always going to do the right thing. But in this crucible, Biden completely failed the political courage test.

Fast forward to the spring of 2020. The Biden Presidential campaign has taken a beating in the Iowa caucuses, and barely has a pulse after placing far down the ballot in the New Hampshire primary. He is leaking supporters and money. And Democrats across the nation are looking on in horror as the party appears destined to choose a far too liberal boutique candidate as its 2020 standard bearer.  

But Jim Clyburn, the African American dean of the South Carolina Democratic Congressional delegation, has other ideas. He issues a strongly worded endorsement of Joe Biden. Seasoned political observers credit this endorsement as one of the most effective in American history, as Joe Biden—with Clyburn’s backing–proceeded to streamroll his way to a substantial win in South Carolina. Gay candidate Pete Buttigieg, Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders, and even the black Senator Kamala Harris go down in flames.  

The South Carolina Biden win on February 29, 2020, was decisive. Before the next set of contests, Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar both drop out and endorse Biden. Biden cruises to Super Tuesday wins in ten states, and the nomination is virtually wrapped up.

Consider the role of “political courage” in Biden’s rise to ultimate power. If Biden had come out strongly against the Clarence Thomas in 1991, would Jim Clyburn and the black voters of South Carolina have pushed him to victory in 2020? It’s impossible to know. But there’s a reason why politicians don’t like to make bold decisions or take controversial positions. They never know what the future is going to hold. Certainly, Biden couldn’t predict his Presidential future back in 1991. But he did know that he harbored Presidential ambitions. His cowardly behavior in the Anita Hill hearings allowed him to avoid alienating a key source of future support. And thanks to Biden’s win, Donald Trump is now a private citizen. So voters, let’s all tip our hats to that most important element of a politician’s character—a lack of political courage.