As the 2024 election nears, the two major presidential candidates Biden and Trump will be front and center in the public eye. It’s likely that at least some of their speeches will disclose their policy priorities for 2025 and beyond. Biden’s Morehouse College speech, on the other hand, was telling for a very different reason.
It is graduations season, which often provides presidential candidates with an opportunity to speak to graduates. Of course, President Biden took advantage of that when he spoke at the historic Black college, Morehouse College, in Atlanta Georgia.
Not surprisingly, Americans and their media were divided on his performance. CNN covered the speech in this light: “Biden’s Morehouse commencement was the latest in a series of efforts undertaken by the president in recent days to both acknowledge the nation’s historic racial shortcomings while simultaneously addressing its next generation of Black leaders.”
Fox, on the other hand, wrote, “President Biden's commencement speech at Morehouse College on Sunday sparked backlash with critics describing one part of the president's speech as "disgusting" race baiting.”
While they addressed the politics of the speech, there was also an important message about what Joe Biden and/or his speech writers/handlers believe about the American system of government today.
The following is a portion of the speech as published by the White House:
“It’s natural to wonder if democracy you hear about actually works for you. What is democracy if Black men are being killed in the street? What is democracy if a trail of broken promises still leave Black — Black communities behind? What is democracy if you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot?”
While some see that as an outreach to Black voters and others as race-baiting, the words tell a much deeper and very important story about this White House.
Joe Biden was plainly stating that American democracy is not working for Blacks today. Beneath that opinion or observation, depending on your point of view, is another message.
In plain terms, Joe Biden is not willing to let our system of government stop his political ambitions or preferred programs. Nor does he hold our form of government as sacrosanct. Instead, he values government’s ability to act more than preserving the Constitution and acting within is rules.
His presidency offers clear examples of that beyond the normal expansion of power practiced by the executive branch of recent presidents. Most prominently, Biden regularly boasts about his defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling that declared his student loan forgiveness plans unlawful.
According to Chief Justice Roberts, when striking down Biden’s initial forgiveness plan, “the question here is not whether something should be done; it is who has the authority to do it.” The Supreme Court ruled Biden did not.
Not satisfied, Biden has said he found another way to do it and has proceeded to “forgive” billions in debt. Perhaps, not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt (“FDR”), has a president so brazenly spoken and acted on his disdain for the Constitutional checks and balances of the Republic.
For his part, FDR declared that Americans “cannot seriously be alarmed when they cry ‘unconstitutional’ at every effort to better the condition of our people.” To the contrary, FDR asserted that “we will no longer be permitted to sacrifice each generation in turn while the law catches up with life.” The law to which FDR was referring was the United States Constitution.
FDR engaged in a pitched battle with the Supreme Court after the Court declared significant parts of his New Deal unconstitutional. The Court ruled that federal government did not have the power, under the Constitution, to undertake the New Deal programs.
In response to the Supreme Court rulings, FDR proceeded to bully the Supreme Court into submission to approve of his New Deal, Part II. Historians have described FDR as being at “war” with the Supreme Court. According to historian William E. Leuchtenburg, Roosevelt “touched off the greatest struggle in our history among the branches of government.”
In the end, the winner of that battle turned out to be FDR. In the process, a Supreme Court Justice flipped his vote, another retired and the Supreme Court proceeded to authorize one of the largest expansions of federal government power in history.
Joe Biden’s recent questioning of “What is democracy?” and implying that it is “a trail of broken promises” echoes FDR’s criticisms of the Supreme Court and the Constitution. The major difference, of course, is that government power has exploded since the New Deal and with that, so has government spending at all levels of government.
Indeed, government power has never been greater – and still Joe Biden is not satisfied.
If that is the case, and Biden is willing to defy the Supreme Court to satisfy his political ambitions and succeed at doing it, voters should ask themselves what else will presidents be willing to do in the future and whether the Republic is truly safe in the hands of such people.