This is the introduction to Checks and Balance, a weekly subscriber-only newsletter offering exclusive insight from our correspondents in America.
James Bennett, our Lexington columnist, examines Joe Biden’s farewell speech
It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did: After half a century of being the most talkative politician in America — Donald Trump may have overtaken him in recent years — Joe Biden still has something new to say. In what was a weak farewell, he used his farewell speech to sound the alarm. “An oligarchy is forming in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy,” he said.
Biden went on to say that some members of this oligarchy derive their power from new technology. The precedent for Biden’s speech, which he cited, was President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned of the rising “military-industrial complex” and its potential for “undue influence,” not just on government, but across government. Contracts for scientific research. Biden spoke of a “tech-industrial complex” that was burying Americans in disinformation and potentially threatening all of humanity with artificial intelligence.
I books A few weeks ago about how Silicon Valley was sliding away from the Democrats and toward Mr. Trump. Since then, the shift has become a stampede, and Biden’s speech will likely accelerate the pace of the shift. That doesn’t make him wrong, and I think he deserves credit for using his final national address as president to do more than just try to put a retrospective glow on his administration. As with Eisenhower, history may judge his warning to be prophetic. Just as Eisenhower himself oversaw growth in the military, Biden cannot be said to have prioritized weakening the oligarchy while in office. In fact, he recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to some wealthy people who have used their money to influence politics, albeit in ways approved by the president.
Biden has had great accomplishments in office, but I don’t think history will be kind to his administration overall. He was warning that Trump poses an existential threat to democracy as well. But he didn’t judge as if he really meant it. In contrast to his long-displayed centrist instincts, he has indulged in unpopular and ill-advised left-wing positions on issues like illegal immigration and student loan forgiveness, and despite justifiable public concerns about his age, he has arrogantly sought a second term for too long. long. Instead of consigning Trump to the dustbin of history, Biden eventually did the following: Set him up for success In pursuing his MAGA agenda, at home and abroad.
As we warn in Our leaderTrump’s focus on the unilateral exercise of economic and military power rather than moral leadership could squander the greatest amount of geopolitical power America has possessed since World War II. He would do well to think of another of Eisenhower’s farewell thoughts to the nation. “In the long course of history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever smaller, must avoid becoming a society of apocalyptic fear and hate and, instead, be a proud union built on mutual trust and respect,” he said in a speech. Farewell. “Such a union must be equal. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as we do, protected by our moral, economic and military strength.
