Pulling the Curtain Back on President Biden’s Retirement Address

There is an expression in politics referring to how legislation is made; it is likened to the making of sausage, the public display of which is not generally desired. Furthermore, it is unrealistic and even counter-productive for the American electorate to know the intricate mechanisms by which a bill makes its way through Congress before being signed by the president to become a law. Nevertheless, the strategic and self-interested manipulation of public perception by elected representatives in order that the electorate will have an overstated positive view of its representatives, who can have more discretion and thus power with the vote of confidence, is counter to an effective democratic republic, which after all is distinct from direct democracy. I contend that the desire to falsely manipulate popular opinion went into President Biden’s address on his decision to serve only one term, as well as in the comments of high ranking members of his party in support of his decision not to run for reelection. That there might be more political capital, not to mention a better legacy, in being straight with the American people is a possibility that seems to elude American politicians.

American political philosophy posits unintentional beneficial consequences from the pursuit of self-interest, which springs from self-oriented love, as does Adam Smith’s price-oriented theory of competitive markets. That such benefits are possible does not mean that a self-centric pursuit of one’s interest is itself normatively good, and thus laudatory. Indeed, Smith is careful to condition even the unintended beneficial economic consequence of the individual’s pursuit of one’s interest on the presence of competition wherein no individual seller, or oligopolistic group thereof, can sent a price by fiat. Smith even enveloped his economic theory on his other major work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the title of which speaks for itself even if such sentiments are in practice hardly strong enough against the love of greed even in a competitive market. Translated into political terms, the check-and-balance vital function in the separation of powers, or branches, of the U.S. Government, and even between the governments of the member states and that of the union, is an institutional means by which the ambition of individual representatives and even governmental bodies can be held back from overreaching at the expense of the liberty of the people. It is vital that the self-interest qua political ambition of elected representatives (as well as their respective appointees) be held in check not only by criminal law, but also by the very arrangement of political institutions within a government, and even between governments in a federal system. 

Of course, in addition to institutional checks and balances, elections should have consequences. An officeholder who deftly trades monetary favors (aka campaign contributions) for support on legislation favorable to the private interest (and thus the officeholder’s own interest in gaining more power) but unfavorable to the public interest or at least the interests of the electorate can be voted out of office at the next election. However, the stealth that the elected representatives usually use to enact such private trades render the electorate’s judgment and thus decision suboptimal. In short, a lot goes on behind the scenes that is pertinent to an electorate’s ability to exercise effective judgment in holding officeholders accountable from the standpoint of the electorate’s interests. It is in the political interest of elected representatives to create and sustain the impression publicly of being worthy of the public trust, so more is needed to counter this natural inclination among the powerful in line with the central principle of a republic that the electorate—the popular sovereign—is superior to its elected representatives—the governmental sovereign. For an agent to willfully mislead a principal, taking advantage of there being too much “daylight” existing between an elected representative and the electorate, is essentially to turn a republic upside down.

Speaking from the Oval Office on television on his decision not to run for reelection, U.S. President Joe Biden said that “saving our democracy” is “more important than any title.”[1] Actually, former U.S. presidents were in the practice of retaining the title. At the time, President Carter, President Bush, President Clinton, and President Obama were still alive. So, President Biden could expect to continue to be referred to as such after his term as president. It was power that he was giving up by not running for reelection. Although he casted his decision as one of voluntarily putting the interests of his party and country above his political ambition, the fact what that his two top advisors had just days earlier explained to him why it was virtually impossible for him to win reelection. Additionally, according to CNN, “Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately told President Joe Biden . . . that polling shows that the president cannot defeat Donald Trump and that Biden could destroy Democrats’ chances of winning the House in November.”[2] The press also reported that Pelosi also told the president that she would make the polling numbers public if he did not bow out on his own within in a week or so. Because the president took “the easy way” rather than “the hard way,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ majority leader in the U.S. Senate, used a press conference to characterize Biden’s decision as selfless and patriotic, when it was actually a realistic assessment that he would lose power anyway by losing the election. Because Biden took Pelosi’s “easy way” to make the decision on his own, Schumer even said that he “deeply” loved the president. If it was love, it was a very conditional sort.

As if Schumer’s declaration of love were not over the top enough, Biden “presented himself as a truth-teller” during his address. He even said, “The truth is that the sacred cause of this nation is bigger than any one of us,” as if he had just selflessly given up power to save democracy in America from a tyranny under Don Trump rather than just been shown the exit by the other top leaders of the Democratic Party.[3] He made no reference to his elderly infirmities and how they could be expected to be worse during a second term, or the intractable electoral math, which in turn was due to the obvious display of the toll that age had already taken on his body during the presidential debate a month earlier.

In short, he was essentially pushed out by his own party because he refused to do the responsible (and selfless) thing by leveling with the American people that he should not serve a second term even if he could. His decision was not really voluntary, as if he was giving up something that he could otherwise have (a second term). His decision was neither selfless nor patriotic, for he had held on to his nomination even when it was clear that he would be too old to be president in a term that would not even begin for six months. He did not “fall on his sword.” Like Schumer’s false declaration of “deep love” for the president, Biden’s claim of giving up power for the good of his party and the nation was a lie, even as he had the audacity to say in his brief address, “When I was elected, I promised to always level with you, to tell you the truth.”[4]

My point is not to criticize Joe Biden or even other leaders of the Democratic Party. Decades earlier, when I was a student at Yale, I had been very impressed in a small-group setting—at what used to be called Master’s Teas at Yale—listening to Sen. Biden discuss the federal deficits and debt and the implications for the international financial system. I raise the case of his public address on his retirement from politics to make a broader claim.

The president said in his address, “The great thing about America is here, kings and dictators do not rule. The people do. History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America—lies in your hands.”[5] This case shows just how much the people’s elected representatives can mislead the people in civic matters. The reality behind President Biden’s decision not to run for reelection was much different, much less stellar, than what the president and many elected Democrats presented to the people. The upshot is that the elected representatives, including the president of the United States, are less saintly—less willing to be selflessly patriotic—than the electorate has been led to believe. The need to keep an eye on officials is greater than what is implied by Biden’s address. Government of the people, through elected representatives, is not at altruistic as the political elite, for selfish reasons, would like the people to believe. Rather than trying to save American democracy, Pelosi and Schumer did not want to see the president’s reelection campaign result in Republican control of both chambers of Congress. This issue here is thus not Joe Biden, or even the Democratic Party; rather, the problem is how little the American people actually see and know of the real motives and strategies of the political elite, which includes both parties.

Assessing candidates at election time is likely not as effective as the American electorate  believes on account of being subtly manipulated from afar; more is kept from the electorate than it realizes concerning the people running for public office. On Capitol Hill and in the West Wing, more effort than the American people realize is put into how things will be perceived by the people. For example, it is enough that the people perceive members of Congress being vocally critical of powerful CEOs, such as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and Mark Zuckerberg of (formerly) Facebook during the user-data privacy scandal, who contribute lots of money to political campaigns (which generally is not well publicized), without actual legislation being enacted contrary to the financial interests of the CEOs or their companies. It is enough that the public sees angry elected representatives. The superficial implication is that they are protecting the public interest so the electorate can have confidence in its public officials rather than having to double the effort to disentangle big business from Congress and the White House.

To put a private, or partial, interest above the public good is to doom the later to interests that care little of the good of the whole relative to the welfare of the part. The good of a whole is never the same as that of one of its parts unless all of the parts are identical. The interests of the United States do not reduce to those of Texas any more that those of the European Union reduce to those of France. This is why the political dominance of a large state in either union at the federal level is problematic, such as was evinced by Germany in E.U. policy during the European debt crisis.

The private (including political) interests of an elected representative are, I submit, not generally speaking well known by voters, who in turn are tasked with assessing the qualities of candidates rather than merely voting on policy positions. Perhaps more of the latter could be decided by referendum, leaving to elections the primary matter of the sort of people who are to be elected to serve the public interest. Moreover, popular sovereignty could stand to be strengthened, given the distance between elected political elites and their electorates. Simply put, that distance should be reduced, and journalism can go only so far, especially with journalists relying of officeholders for interviews.

In the film, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s dog Toto pulls open the curtain that had been hiding the actual Wizard from view. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! This is one of the all-time iconic lines in cinema. And Toto too! is not far behind. It is in the Wizard’s interest to keep his actual condition—that he is just a person rather than a giant head with raging flames on both sides—hidden from view so he can continue to exercise extraordinary power by instilling fear. It is interesting to ponder what this uncovering might look like writ-large in America’s representative democracy. I submit that pulling open the curtain that acts as a beltway around Washington D.C., formerly a swamp, is vitally needed to restore the proper relationship between popular and governmental sovereignty in the United States.

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1. Eli Stokols and Lauren Egan, “Biden Is Passing the Torch ‘to Unite Our Nation,” Politico, July 24, 2024.
2. M.J. Lee, Jamie Gangel, and Jeff Zeleny, “Pelosi Privately Told Biden Polls Show He Cannot Win and Will Take Dow the House; Biden Responded with Defensiveness,” CNN, July 18, 2024.
3. Eli Stokols and Lauren Egan, “Biden Is Passing the Torch ‘to Unite Our Nation,” Politico, July 24, 2024.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

The E.U. on Hungary: Beyond Symbolic Measures

Any federal system of government must function fundamentally as a unit even though the states are semi-sovereign, as is the federal level. The Nullification Crisis in the U.S. during the nineteenth century highlighted the plight a federal union would face were state governments able to ignore federal law unilaterally. Fortunately, President Jackson was able to get South Carolina to stand down on this point. In 2024, the E.U.'s federal officials were having trouble getting the state of Hungary not only to apply a federal directive within the state, but also to stop contradicting the E.U.'s foreign policy against Putin's Russia in Ukraine by engaging in diplomatic trips of appeasement. A federal system that lacks the means procedurally or substantively to protect federal prerogatives against the contradictory actions of wayward states is not viable in the long term.

Every E.U. state government is bound by Article 24.3 of the E.U.’s basic law, which mandates that those governments must support the union’s foreign policy “actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity.”[1] It is not often that a E.U. official mentions the obligation of loyalty in reference to the states toward the union, but the normative glue should not be ignored or even trivialized, especially given the preponderance of residual sovereignty that the state governments enjoy in the E.U.’s federal system. Josep Borell, the E.U.’s foreign minister, was referring to Viktor Orbán of the state of Hungary, whose “peace mission” to Moscow and Beijing coincided with the state of Hungary’s six-month presidency of the Council of the E.U. in early July, 2024. “Any so-called ‘peace mission’ that ignores” that Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine “is, at the end of the day, only benefitting Putin and will not bring peace.”[2] Borell was referring back to Orbán’s previous characterization of the union’s supplies of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine as a “pro-war policy.”[3] “The only one who’s pro-war is Putin,” Borell stated.[4] Referring to Orbán’s statement as belonging “to the realm of a lack of loyal cooperation,” Borell said, “We have to send a signal, even if it’s a symbolic signal, that being against the foreign policy of the European Union and disqualifying the policy of the European Union as the ‘party of war’ has to have consequences.”[5] The informal meeting of the foreign ministers of the states, known as Gymnich, would take place in Brussels rather than in Hungary’s state capital, Budapest. This move is indeed symbolic, for the official meetings are not subject to the 6-month rotating presidencies of the states.

The question is thus whether Borell’s use of the symbolic was sufficient to enforce Article 24.3 on the loyalty that the state governments owe to the union with respect to its foreign policy. I submit that a symbolic gesture, at best a “slap on the wrist,” is not sufficient to forestall undercutting moves by the governors of the state governments, for the political interests of the latter may differ from that of the union as a whole, and symbol is no match for real politic.

As Borell himself admitted, Orbán’s continued veto of military assistance for Ukraine was ongoing, and it was totally legal under E.U. basic law. Moving an informal meeting to Brussels would not change Orbán’s use of his state’s veto in the European Council. Nor would the states sending lower-level civil servants to an informal meeting of state interior/justice officials in Budapest. Arnoldas Abramavicius, Lithuania’s Deputy Minister of the Interior, refused to call sending lower level politicians a boycott; he would not even state that Orbán’s diplomatic trips to Moscow and Beijing violate the E.U. foreign policy against Russia. “I think this is a reaction towards Hungary’s external activity maybe sometimes not adjusted to the European framework,” he said at the meeting.[6] The diplomatic trips designed to negotiate with an aggressor with whom the E.U. would not negotiate is worse than merely not being coordinated or adjusted with the federal policy, which, by the way, is not a framework.

In fact, Borell undercut his argument and the E.U. itself by how he put the matter of the states’ foreign policy power. “Each member state is sovereign on its foreign policy—true. But as far as they’re members of this club, they have to obey the treaties.”[7] Given Article 24.3, however, each state’s foreign policy was not sovereign, for it could not contradict the union’s foreign policy. Moreover, the E.U. itself was not a club even as of 2024. The European Court of Justice had repeatedly ruled that federal laws, regulations, and directives are binding on the states, and the ECJ’s decisions are binding on the state courts as well as the state governments. Furthermore, clubs do not have a directly elected legislature such as the European Parliament, and, moreover, all three branches of government. Given the preponderance of governmental sovereignty residing with the states in 2024, the E.U. could ill afford being rhetorically diminished by one of its own officials, especially in the midst of a struggle between the union and a sitting governor.

A letter signed by over 63 state lawmakers addressed to the top three E.U. officials insists that Hungary’s Orbán had “caused significant damage” by his two diplomatic trips, so it was not merely a matter of not being adjusted to the E.U.’s foreign policy in which Putin is squarely the aggressor in the war.[8] Appropriately, the state officials called on the union “to suspend Hungary’s voting rights in the European Council” because “mere verbal condemnation” of the wayward state government has “no effect.”[9] Nor does merely moving the location of an informal meeting and sending lower-level officials.

That the European Council had not already suspended Hungary’s voting rights not only due to Orbán’s efforts to appease (Von der Leyen’s word) Putin but also the European Court of Justice’s ruling that Hungary had refused to implement a federal directive suggests that the union is vulnerable to defections by state governments with all but symbolic impunity. To apply anything close to unanimity for the voting rights of a state in the European Council to be stripped is itself not only foolhardy, but undercutting as well. An amendment applying qualified majority voting to sanctioning a violating state in the European Council would improve the coherence and functioning of the union at the federal level in line with the rule of law, while a state government deprived of its voting rights could still appeal to the European Court of Justice concerning the fairness of the mechanism and how it is being applied.

It bears noting that the Titanic could not avoid the iceberg in part because the ship’s rudder was too small, given the size of the ship. Or, if an analogy of several ships is preferred, a line spoken by a European in the film, The Godfather, Part III, applies: “Our ships must all sail in the same direction.” For one ship to sail not only apart from the others, but then into them must surely not be permitted. Appeasing or even just negotiating separately with Putin while referring to the E.U. foreign policy as pro-war even while vetoing military assistance to Ukraine should have been met with more than a symbolic response by E.U. federal officials, and the fact that it was not is an indication that the federal system contains a significant vulnerability, or weakness, that should be redressed especially before additional states are permitted to join the union.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Borrell Accuses Orbán of Disloyalty and Joins Boycott Against Hungary’s E.U. Presidency,” Euronews, July 22, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Caitlin Danaher, “E.U. Moves High-Level Meetings Out of Budapest to Protest Orbán’s Ukraine War Stance,” CNN, July 22, 2024.
7. Jorge Liboreiro, “Borrell Accuses Orbán of Disloyalty and Joins Boycott Against Hungary’s E.U. Presidency,” Euronews, July 22, 2024.
8. Caitlin Danaher, “E.U. Moves High-Level Meetings Out of Budapest to Protest Orbán’s Ukraine War Stance,” CNN, July 22, 2024.
9. Ibid.

Differentiating the European Council and Parliament: Meloni of Italy

At the federal level of the E.U., the European Council, like the Senate in the U.S., represents the states, whereas the European Parliament, like the U.S. House of Representatives, represents citizens—that’s right, E.U. citizens. The theory behind this difference is a modification of traditional federalism theory, wherein only the polities in a federation are represented at the federal level. In this traditional way of doing federalism, individuals, or citizens, belong only to the first level of political organization. Althusius’s Political Digest (1603) describes that theory, borrowing a lot from the example of the Holy Roman Empire. The advent of both polities and federal citizens being directly represented at a federal level was born out of compromise during the American Constitutional Convention in 1787. The E.U. replicated the structure, wherein the state governments and E.U. citizens (or legal residents) each have their own channel of access to affect federal law and policy on the federal level. For one of the two to cross over and eclipse the other in its own channel is suboptimal because both vantage points contribute to sound federal law in a way that enables them to protect their respective interests, which are not identical. It is thus not appropriate for a state government, including its governor or head of state, to direct members of Parliament how to vote on a given bill, whether their districts are within or outside of the state.

On July 18, 2024, Giorgia Meloni, the governor of the E.U. state of Italy, “ordered the 24 MEPs,” or members of Parliament of her state-level Fratelli d’Italia, or Brothers of Italy, group “to vote against the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission.”[1] I contend that those representatives were instead duty-bound to vote the interests of their respective voters rather than serve as an additional resource for the state government at the federal level, or else to vote along with the rest of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party in the Parliament, rather than as a state group representing the state’s government. This is admittedly a different perspective than that which both American and European media outlets have intentionally or unintentionally absorbed from the Euroskeptic ideology wherein the European Parliament is really even a legislative body and thus does not have its own parties (and interests).

From an American perspective, it would be like the governor of a state ordering representatives of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote a certain way, rather than in line with the wishes or interests of the constituents in the respective districts or the federal-level party recognized by the U.S. House.  The U.S. Senate is where the state governments are to exercise their authority at the federal level even though this line is more direct in the European Council because the heads of the state governments themselves sit in that chamber, rather than separately elected senators. Indeed, Meloni already had her chance to vote against Von der Leyen’s nomination in the European Council—Meloni abstained. For her to order members of Parliament to vote against the nominee essentially doubled Meloni’s, and thus her state government’s, role at the federal level. Not only is this excessive; it also eclipses the voice of the E.U. citizens in the districts of the MEPs who followed Meloni’s order. That is to say, the order upset the balance of inputs—that of the states and the E.U. citizens—feeding into the federal level.

Given the staying power of the principle of unanimity at the federal level as of 2024, the power of the state governments at the federal level was arguably too much anyway for the viability of the E.U.’s functioning at the federal level. Eclipsing the voice of the people by attempting to subordinate their directly elected representatives (even though by party) worsens the imbalance.

In his text, Federal Government, Kenneth Wheare describes a federal system as wheels within a wheel. All of those should be in balance for the system as a whole to function well. I disagree strongly with his claim that a balance of powers between the states and the federal institutions is not necessary. He claims that the state governments need only have one domain of authority that is autonomous of the federal government for the federal system to be viable, but such an imbalance would be tantamount to political consolidation rather than dual-sovereignty, wherein the states are not eclipsed by federal preemption and power. After nearly 250 years, the U.S. federal system was arguably much closer to consolidation than in that union’s first 50 years. After 30 years, the E.U. suffered from the opposite danger: too much state power, and thus a risk of dissolution. Although strong institutional safeguards to prevent eventual consolidation at the expense of viable federalism were advisable in the E.U., given the historical trajectory of the U.S. towards consolidation in an empire in which one size does not fit all, given the different cultures therein, too much of a role for the state governments at the federal level was itself a danger for the E.U. in 2024. The staying power of the principle of unanimity alone threatened to excessively encumber E.U. policy-making and law, and thus fuel Euroskeptic movements toward the dissolution of the union (which is neither a bloc nor an international organization). Furthermore, eclipsing the sacred relationship between the representatives in the Parliament and their respective constituencies, E.U. citizens, worsens the “democracy deficit.” Just as the U.S. House was originally intended as the democratic body at the federal level in the U.S., as U.S. senators were initially chosen by their respective state governments and the president by the Electoral College, the European Parliament can be seen as the sole repository of democracy in the European Union. A look at how the Commission’s president is nominated and elected without E.U. citizens voting on the question and the fact that the European Council represents the state governments rather than their respective peoples directly demonstrate the importance of the Parliament in terms of direct representative democracy at the federal level.

In short, the E.U. state governments should keep their paws off the European Parliament; the European Council and the Council of the E.U. is where state-level officials can affect federal policy and law at the federal level. If anything, the authority of the Parliament should have been strengthened in 2024 relative to the powers of the Commission and especially the European Council (and the Council of the E.U.). At the very least, all of the political groups in the Parliament should have been recognized at the federal level as political parties in themselves rather than as informal groups of state-level parties. In 2024, the drastic imbalance in the federal system in favor of the state governments, whose individual and collective interests are in theory and practice different than that of the E.U. both as a federal system and in terms of federal policy and law, was a major problem that did not need to be worsened by encroachments. From a federal perspective, the governor of the E.U. state of Italy was coloring outside the lines in seeking more influence at the federal level. Objecting to this does not suggest in the least that protections for the state governments against possible federal encroachment, as has happened in the U.S., should be disabled or torn down.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Analysis: Giorgia Meloni’s Façade as a Pragmatic E.U. Leader Has Suddenly Crumbled,” Euronews, July 19, 2024.

Journalism Goes Only So Far in Empire-Scale Democracy

A news story only goes so far; only so much “digging” is possible against a pressing deadline. Moreover, we humans are not particularly good at “connecting the dots” when they are far afield. Through natural selection in an environment in which humans were prey as well as hunters, we are still “hard-wired” to privilege the immediate. So it takes more than a bit of effort to counter this natural predilection in order to make a truly informed judgment that takes into account the relevant tributaries. One such judgment concerns the impact of U.S. President Joe Biden’s age on his fitness to serve a second term.

I submit that after the presidential debate in June, 2024, the American media did not adequately distinguish the issue being how fit the president would be in the future, during a second term, from how he was at the time of the debate (and whether the issue was episodic or of a continuing and gradually worsening condition—the White House had a vested interest in promoting the former over the latter). Even in this respect, the human orientation to the immediate is evident. How the president did a few well-orchestrated appearances in the wake of the debate is relevant if the issue were episodic—one of a bad performance—and the press by in large accepted this paradigm at the expense of asking how the president would be in two or three years—the second term not beginning for six months! Whether the president would be fit in terms of old-age to serve a second term is also not the same as whether he could win the election, yet the media was satisfied to let the latter be the pivotal issue given the political interests of Democrats running for office. The issue concerning the president’s age was how he would be in two or three years, not whether he should immediately resign or whether he could win the election. Both in focusing on particular “performances” and on the political question of whether Biden could win the election, the media was enabling rather than countering the common propensity to privilege the immediacy over the eventual. This orientation to furnishing information to the voters is not conducive to good electoral judgment by any electorate.

Taking the issue to be the president’s likely future fitness to serve a second term, Americans’ horizon could have been deepened in at least two respects. That is, Americans could go beyond their media to consider two additional things.

First, with President Biden down with the “covid” virus, rather than looking for immediate symptoms, people could have recalled that Queen Elizabeth survived the illness itself only to die a year or so after it. After she had recovered from the illness itself, she admitted to two visitors that it had been bad, so it is reasonable to suppose that her death a year or so later came as a result. Given the long-term impact of the virus on organs such as the heart, it is possible that for the elderly who survive the onset of the virus, the life-threatening aspect may kick in a year or two later from a weakened heart muscle. If so, the implications for Biden being able to serve a complete second term should not be ignored or passed over in favor of looking for immediate symptoms. It bears remembering that President Wilson was severely impacted by at least one stroke during his second term, and the White House kept this from the American people. In 2024 just after the June debate, even members of the political elite were angry because Biden’s handlers had kept even just his decline a secret. Perhaps a few news stories on Wilson’s second term could have nudged the electorate in considering what Biden’s handlers might do during a second term.

Second, even in the midst of public discourse on President Biden’s health and age, the media, with the exception of one article by The Washington Post, did not mention that he had had two brain operations for aneurysms in 1988. Although he fully recovered, how or whether the surgeries themselves or the aneurysms could have a negative impact his elderly brain was worth asking following the debate. In short, rather than merely looking at the president’s immediate health, a longer, longitudinal perspective would have been useful, especially as the issue was the impact of old-age on the president’s brain in particular and the surgery had been on his brain.

As to why the media did not include these considerations, the focus on the immediate that is engrained in human nature served not only journalists under pressure to put out a story before a deadline, but also politicians whose political survival instinct to be elected (or re-elected). Whether President Biden could win came to include whether he would take the U.S. House down with him—meaning that the legislative chamber would continue to have a Republican majority. Subjecting Biden’s immediate covid symptoms to coverage and juxtapositioning his slightly increased lethargy with a triumphant Trump at the Republican Convention fit that narrative and the buttressing political interests of the moment. In contrast, whether the covid virus could leave its mark on the president not immediately, but in a year or two, such that he might be more likely to die in his second term did not fit and was thus ignored by journalists and the political elite alike. Whether from collusion or coincident interests, the impact was the same. Up against the human tendency to privilege the immediate and political interests hinging on the 2024 election, the question of whether the president could viably serve a full second term quietly dissipated. Did anyone notice?  I doubt it; the shift was so subtle, and of course in line with our human, all too human propensity to focus on the more immediate.

For the profound thinkers on democracy, a few broader tasks can be suggested to ponder. First, given the human propensity to focus on the immediate, do journalists and media companies have a responsibility to compensate by emphasizing longer-term factors that are relevant to an electorate’s judgment in an upcoming election? If so, should such responsibility be waived if viewers (or readers) simply do not want the less titillating material to be included in the news stories? Against pressure from advertisers, any such responsibility would likely be quickly flailed against the nearest wall without any hindrance from conscience. Second, like the six-year term of U.S. Senators, are there any other structural elements that could be added to the U.S. political system that would counter the hegemony of immediacy in preference to the long-term? Rather than extending the terms of senators even more, or extending the terms of any other elected representative at the federal level, how can the electoral process or system be altered in ways that provide more space for long-term considerations by an electorate? It may be that instituting maximum and not just minimum age qualifications would help, but such a quick fix ought not to relegate the value in analyzing systemic elements of the electoral and governmental systems in terms of whether they lean us toward the immediate. If so, could structural reforms be “invented” that tilt either or both systems to favor medium- and long-term considerations? That the U.S. debt had by 2024 increased to an astronomical figure of nearly $35 trillion—perhaps already a de facto default—suggests that the systems were aligned in favor of the human propensity to emphasize instant gratification over the long-term viability of a republic (or a republic of republics, as in the cases of the U.S. and E.U.).

On the European Commission Boycotting Hungary’s Presidency of the Council of the E.U.

Whereas just one presidency applies to the U.S. at the federal level, the E.U. has several. There is a president of the European Commission, a president of the European Parliament, a president of the European Council, and a president of the Council of the E.U., the latter being held by a state government on a six-month rotating basis. On July 1, 2024, the E.U. state of Hungary assumed that role. Because that state’s government had recently been found guilty by the E.U.’s top court, the E.C.J., of blocking federal law within the state, the matter of Hungary taking its turn in chairing the Council of the E.U. was controversial at the time. Because Viktor Orbán, governor of Hungary, used the insignia of the presidency of the Council in making unauthorized diplomatic trips to Russia and China on the war in Ukraine, the European Commission, the E.U. government’s executive branch, took the unusual decision to boycott Hungary’s presidency. Shortly thereafter, the E.U.'s parliament followed suit with a resolution condemning Orbán's diplomatic trip to Moscow. I contend that Orbán’s foray into diplomatic relations even as he was taking on a major role at the federal level presents good evidence for why foreign policy should be federalized in the E.U. as it has been in the U.S., and for the same reason.

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates felt the need to delegate foreign policy and diplomacy to the proposed federal executive branch out of concern that the states would be used, and torn apart from one another, by foreign states pursuing their interests at America’s expense. It went without saying that a state-level official could not represent the union abroad. Besides not being able to speak for the other states and the union itself, a governor conducting foreign policy both for the union and one’s own state would have to contend with a conflict of interest where the interests of the union diverge from that of the official’s state. All of these problems were obviated by having the states delegate foreign policy to the federal level with the states still retaining residual sovereignty. It bears stating that the thirteen states that exited the British Empire in 1776 were sovereign states until they delegated some of their respective sovereignty to the federal level of the union in 1789.

In 2024, in the midst of Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine, the federal level of the E.U. was involved in foreign policy, and yet a governor of any state government could also take on a role in foreign policy as that was a shared competency (i.e., both federal and state levels). That the governor of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, used the official logo of the Hungarian presidency of the Council of the E.U. in his “peace mission” to Russia and China days after he had assumed the presidency for Hungary signaled or implied a federal foreign-policy role was troubling enough. That he publicly stated, “China is the only world power that has been clearly committed to peace since the beginning” of the war even though the E.U. had dismissed the “Chinese peace plan” for “making a selective interpretation of international law and blurring the line between the aggressor and the aggressed” was too much for the E.U.’s executive branch.[1] That Orbán met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, a person wanted by the ICC for war crimes against civilians in Ukraine, to “start a dialogue on the shortest road to peace” just days before Russia bombed a children’s hospital in Kyiv was also not missed by the Commission.[2]

As a result, the European Commission decided to boycott Hungary’s six-month presidency of the E.U. Council. In addition to going to Moscow and Beijing on peace missions, that Orbán had stated that he would use Hungary’s chairing of the Council to sideline the accession talks so to postpone statehood for Ukraine was likely another factor in the boycott. “In light of recent developments marking the start of the Hungarian Presidency, the President (Ursula von der Leyen) has decided that the European Commission will be represented at senior civil servant level only during informal meetings of the Council,” according to a spokesperson for the Commission.[3] The College visit to the Presidency also would not take place. 

Days after the Commission's boycott, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning Orbán's diplomatic visit to Moscow. The resolution itself "stresses that during this visit, he did not represent the E.U., and considers the visit to be a blatant violation of the E.U.'s treaties and common foreign policy, including the principle of sincere cooperation; [and] underlines that the Hungarian Prime Minister cannot claim to represent the E.U. when violating common E.U. [foreign policy] positions."[4] That the governor of a state violated federal foreign policy in going abroad while president of a federal institution and two other federal institutions officially objected points to the serious need for E.U. reform concerning foreign policy in terms of the federal system. In other words, the federal system itself contained a fundamental problem in need of a solution.  

Essentially, Orbán was leveraging his temporary presidency of a federal governmental institution of the E.U. to conduct foreign policy at odds with the federal foreign policy against Russia and China. Even if he had been only been conducting bilateral diplomatic relations between his state and Russia and China, that his state government’s position would have conflicted with the E.U.’s position is problematic, for the belligerent foreign powers could have used Orbán’s state of Hungary to drive a wedge into the E.U. and thus weaken not only the defense of Ukraine, but also the E.U. itself as a federal union. Even just in terms of the union’s executive branch boycotting the presidency of the legislative Council of the E.U., the E.U. itself was weakened rather than unified at the federal level.

Most fundamentally, the state governments still had too much power relative to that of the union itself. Also, trying to conduct foreign policy at both the state and federal levels is just asking for trouble because they can work at cross-purposes and even confuse government officials of other countries. Russian officials, for instance, may not have known how much credence to give to Orban versus the condemnations by the Commission and the Parliament. 

Even by 2024, European integration had been tangibly realized in a federal union of states to the extent that one voice was needed on foreign policy, lest the E.U. compromise itself from within. Even though the economic domain had been the backbone of the E.U. coming out of the EC, it bears remembering that the European Coal and Steel Cooperative came out of the post-WWII need to keep an eye on Germany lest it remilitarize. A foreign-policy rationale is thus also baked into the E.U. as per at least one of the international European organizations that pre-existed the European Union. Put another way, the E.U. cannot be traced back only to the European Economic Community. Besides providing for smooth interstate commerce in a single market, peace in Europe is also a salient mission for the European Union, and in this regard being able to speak with one voice rather than divergent state and federal voices would be of great value were it operationalized rather than compromised.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “European Commission Boycotts Hungarian Presidency over Orbán’s Trips to Moscow and Beijing,” Euronews, July 15, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

4. P10_TA (2024)0003, “The Need for the E.U.’s Continuous Support for Ukraine,” 17 July 2024.

On Electing a U.S. President: The Case of President Biden’s Age

One of the reasons why the delegates at the U.S. Constitutional Convention devised the Electoral College to elect the federal president was that they thought that even at 7 million, the population of the U.S. back then was too large for the even just the propertied people, who could vote, to know the candidates very well, if at all. At over 300 million, the U.S. population during the presidential reelection campaign of Joe Biden had to rely on the mass media and the political elite, including statements by the White House, for information on whether the sitting president was too old to serve viably in a second term. The limited number of presidential electors in the states would presumably be small enough that they could have the opportunity to size up the candidates in person. But with electors from fifty rather than just thirteen states, such an opportunity would not be likely. So given the exponential growth of the United States both in terms of member states and their respective populations, the originally anticipated benefit of the Electoral College would not still hold even if the two major political parties had not taken over the College. Even if the states’ respective electors were able to spend enough time in person with the candidates, the parties had ensured that those electors could not be autonomous and thus exercise their judgment. Instead, judgment could only be made at a distance by the massive American electorate whose perspectives have been very vulnerable to intentional manipulation through and even by the media. Put another way, the American people have been vulnerable to making a bad choice based on faulty information. This makes American representative democracy itself vulnerable.

Under most circumstances, a president’s staff can manage how the president comes off to the public. The presentation can thus differ from how the president really is. Yet in casting a vote, a voter should be able to size up how the candidates really are. This is crucial when one of the candidates is already 81 years old. The Biden-Trump debate in June, 2024 was a rare opportunity to see both men beyond the reach of their respective handlers, and thus to get a glimpse of both men as they really were at the time. Whereas Don Trump came off as focused, the president was disoriented at times and generally appeared to suffer simply from old age. There is no fault in that; the fact that the rare glimpse came as a surprise to many Americans demonstrates the extent to which any president is managed on nearly all occasions for public consumption and thus how wrong the voters’ view of an incumbent can be. This insight, more than whether Joe Biden was too old to serve a second term whose beginning was still six months away, was universally missed by the media.

As if to confirm the realization of how much a president’s appearance is managed, and thus misleadingly positive as to a president’s person, the “Biden campaign said the president had a cold to explain why he sounded so hoarse and weak. But Biden’s stumbles right from the beginning [of the debate] played into his biggest vulnerability—his age.”[1] That a cold would not account for a person being disoriented and that Biden had no nasal congestion or even sneezing apparently did not occur to the president’s handlers. Their next explanation was that the president was suffering from jetlag from having flown internationally, but that he had not done so in 12 days also apparently did not occur to the campaign. As neither of these episodic explanations worked to diminish the rather obvious fact that old age is a condition rather than being merely showing in an isolated episode or event, the president himself tried again by telling a group of Democratic governors that he had not been getting enough sleep. If only getting more sleep could extinguish the general effects of old age, nursing homes would be empty. 

Not unexpectedly, “Biden’s comment left several of the governors in the room frustrated.”[2] Yet after the meeting, three governors “painted a positive picture of the meeting during a news conference [outside the White House], adding that Biden is ‘all in’ and ‘in it to win it.’”[3] That the White House had governors speak publicly after the meeting to reassure the electorate of the president’s viability without mentioning that some of the governors had just been frustrated by the claim that an episodic lack of sleep could somehow account for the general condition of old-age demonstrates just how deceivingly the electorate is manipulated and thus how erroneous its view of the president can be without the people realizing it. How could they? The implications for impaired electoral judgment based on (deliberately) faulty information are clear. Without realizing it, the electorates of the States could vote for a second term not unlike that of President Wilson's.

Even in portraying the president’s old-age as if it could possibly be a “one-off” episode, Biden's handlers were taking advantage of the fact that they could manage how the president comes off in almost all of his public appearances. Sitting down for an interview on the radio and television, and reading a speech from a teleprompter at a campaign rally are just a few examples of how the handlers can make the president’s debate “performance” appear to be a “one off” bad performance relative to the others. It is precisely because of the deceiving effect of the handlers that "Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman . . . told CNN that the president needed to do a prolongued and live television interview unlike the recorded one on ABC."[4] The implication is that the public had not seen Biden without guide-rails on ABC and thus could not judge from that appearance how he might do on his own behind the scenes in thinking through and using judgment in an international incident. That Biden's handlers had given a radio host a list of questions to ask the president during a radio interview and that the same questions were asked in other interviews, also after the debate, also attests to the widespread impact of the handlers[5]. I contend that voters should have been informed of this "stagecraft" so they could realize the extent to which their perceptions of the president were being manipulated and thus could lead to bad or impaired judgment in voting.

A performance, such as is staged for a television interview or a campaign rally, is not at all like an ongoing condition such as old-age, which goes on. Even though the condition of old-age is more apparent on some days than others, the underlying condition itself is ongoing, and in fact gradually gets worse even if the people closest to the person don’t notice the change and think he is ok. 

To intentionally portray such a condition as merely a bad performance (rather than a condition) by engineering good performances is intellectually and ethically dishonest. Leaving the electorate with a false impression, taking advantage of the distance between the people at the president, is precisely why the founders wanted the Electoral College. In other words, it is bad for American representative democracy that manufactured images of a president can have, and indeed have had an inordinate influence on voters' judgments. Shock from observing President Biden unfettered, and thus himself, during the debate reflects back on just how good a president's handlers are in crafting a "brand" for public consumption. That it is rare that the American people get to see the proverbial "man behind the curtain" (an allusion to the movie, The Wizard of Oz) can be inferred from just how shocked viewers were in glimpsing President Biden reacting in real time. 

Not satisfied with leaving viewers with their valid conclusions from what they had seen of the the president during the debate, self-interested presidential handlers with an agenda—winning the election—tried to supersede the common-sense conclusions as if they were invalid or incorrect. The president had a cold. He had jetlag. He had not been sleeping well. Anything but the truth. Even if the cause of the condition of old-age were a lack of sleep, smart voters would ask themselves what might happen were President Biden called to the Situation Room in the White House even as early as 10pm (and what about at 3am?) in 2027 to handle an emergency abroad involving the U.S. military. 

Ignoring that serious implication from their own narrative, the handlers scrambled nonetheless to get the president to a podium and teleprompter, and then, days later, to a television interview, as if the condition that the public had just seen during the debate were merely episodic too (and thus outweighable by the other appearances), the president’s handlers even got surrogates, including sitting governors, to publicly attest to the official narrative, which was that the president was fine and was "all in." Faced with this full frontal "corrective," how could the electorate's judgment on election day possibly reflect their authentic observations during the debate? Good judgment based on accurate empirical data is requisite to a voter being able to make a good decision on who should be president of the United States. 

The American people were left with oblique references on television by Jake Tapper of CNN and Carl Bernstein, one of the famous Nixon-Watergate reporters, of admissions heard behind closed doors by people who had witnessed Biden in person enough to know that the president had actually been disoriented on as many as 20 occurrences, especially during the preceding six months. Bernstein said on CNN, "The people I've talked to have all been to Ron Klain [Biden's chirf of staff] in the last year to say, 'We have a problem.'"[6]. That such stuff doesn't usually get out (and isn't meant to get out) and thus reach the American electorate is a large part of why the delegates at the Convention anticipated the need for an institutional check, the Electoral College, on the electorate itself should it make a bad decision. The need for such a check was live and well in 2024, and the Electoral College had never worked as intended, so there was a problem even though it was below the radar of public discourse in the media.

The Founders’ astute insight that not even 7 million citizens could know the candidates for the federal presidency well enough to exercise effective judgment in assessing them at the ballot box was behind the invention of the Electoral College. Even if it had ever worked as a check on bad judgment that can occur at a distance, the College could not be relied upon as such a check by 2024.

Historically, the main officeholders at the federal level of a federation, including the Holy Roman Empire, were chosen by officials at the state level rather than by the individuals in the states. In having state governors in the European Council nominate a candidate for President of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, the E.U. is in sync with the historical federal thought. Although the electors of the Electoral College in the U.S. meet by state, such that each state votes for president, state officials did not, at least as of 2024, have a role in selecting the federal president. 

That representatives elected by E.U. citizens in the European Parliament vote (as a parliament) on the nominee also deviates from the historical thought, which has state-level officeholders select federal officeholders. In American terms, the European Council nominating a candidate and the European Parliament voting on that candidate is roughly as if the U.S. Senate nominated a candidate for president and the U.S. House of Representatives voted on that candidate. Both unions instantiate modern federalism, which is a hybrid as governmental sovereignty is split between the state and federal institutions/governments, so the U.S. would not have to look very far for compatible ideas on how to modify the way its federal president is selected. This is not to say that the U.S. Senate should nominate candidates for president and the U.S. House should vote (not by state) to elect a nominee; rather, some role for governors and/or the Congress might serve as a viable check on the electorate, given the extent to which handlers manipulate the electorate and can thus cause it to make a bad decision on election day. 

Given the falsity in how handlers manage the presentation of a president, including President Biden, it should not be surprising that the American people make some bad decisions as an electorate. How many Americans in 2016 anticipated how President Trump would react to losing the election in 2020? The public image of the man in 2016 differed strikingly from the man himself, yet how many Americans knew even that such a difference existed (and exists for any occupant of the White House). 

To be consistent with historical federal thought, state legislatures and governors, rather than the Congress, would either elect the federal president or at least act as a check on the American people as an the electorate. It has been said especially in American anti-federalist historical thought that state officeholders are "closer to the people" because there are fewer people in the state-level districts than in the Congressional constituencies. But some states are quite populated themselves. Some big states, such as Illinois, California, Florida, and New York, could have a level of even smaller legislative districts by being federal themselves, hence with their respective sovereignties split between the state-level government and those of states within a given state. Such federated states would be like the E.U. states of Belgium and Germany. Chicagoland in Illinois could be like Bavaria in Germany. Having grown up in northern Illinois well outside of Chicagoland, I can attest that the Chicago metro is like another country even within Illinois (although I am a native Cubs baseball fan), even if Europeans like to assume that U.S. states are like provinces. 

Such a system of American federalism within federalism would resemble the federalism theory that Althusius describes, based on the Holy Roman Empire, in his Political Digest (1603). In that theory, the officials of the immediately lower "rung" select the officeholders of the next higher level. Given the E.U.’s process for selecting its executive-branch president, the U.S. could realistically incorporate at least one element of historical federal thought: namely, that the selection of at least one federal official could involve state-level legislators and/or heads-of-state. Because modern federalism, which both the E.U. and U.S. instantiate, is a hybrid only partially incorporating from the historical federal thought, a role for the Congress (like that of the European Council and the European Parliament in the E.U.) is an alternative candidate for a check. 

I submit that some hybrid of either state-level or federal-level office-holders could add a badly needed check-and-balance to the U.S. federal system of governance. In this respect, the E.U. is structured better than is the U.S., as per how a federal president is selected.

In conclusion, the issue of President Biden’s age in 2024 gave the American people an opportunity to see a basic vulnerability in how the federal presidency is filled, and looking to the E.U. affords the Americans a glimpse of a possible solution. How many American voters in 1968 and then again in 1972 had spoken with Richard Nixon in person without his handlers present and could thus realize how morally and criminally compromised the man really was? Sadly, even incumbents are marketed as if they were brands, and votes “buy” one on election day. So much more was at stake in 2024 than President Biden’s age, though insight on how that was being deceivingly managed by the president’s handlers could give Americans a sense of how vulnerable they really were even to their own judgments, given the misinformation. That the excuses of a cold, jetlag, and a lack of sleep—all under the incorrect premise that old-age is episodic rather than being a condition—are so pathetic and that being interviewed by a journalist, reading from a teleprompter at a (caffeinated?) rally, and meeting with governors could possibly be effective counterarguments should have given even Biden supporters pause concerning how an occupant of the federal presidency was being determined by 2024. The failure of the Electoral College could thus be understood as leaving the U.S. vulnerable.

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1 Domenico Montanaro, “4 Takeaways from the First Presidential Debate,” NPR.org, June 28, 2024 (accessed July 4, 2024).
2 Edward Dovere, “Biden Tells Democratic Governors He Needs More Sleep and Plans to Stop Scheduling Events after 8 p.m.” CNN.com, July 4, 2024.
3. Ibid.

4. Stephen Collinson, "Biden's ABC Interview Does Nothing to Quell the Existential Crisis around His Campaign," CNN, July 6, 2024, italics added.

5. Lauren Koenig, Samantha Waldenberg, and Betsy Klein, "Radio Host Who Interviewed Biden Says Aides Provided Questions in Adavance," CNN, July 6, 2024.

6. Joey Garrison, "'I'm the Nominee'," USA Today, July 5, 2024.