Biden and Unity: Like Bush 41 and No New Taxes?

The sitting president had soared to 91% approval, the highest ever recorded, after a rousing success in the Gulf War which restored a modicum of national dignity forfeited a generation before in the quagmire of Vietnam. And yet the following year, the same man was easily defeated in his bid for a second term, and by a formerly obscure and tainted southern governor no less, who only became the nominee because no one else in his party was willing to take on such a popular president. Is Joe Biden now facing the same fate as the man who held his job 30 years ago?

The year was 1992, and the man was George H.W. Bush. In seeking an explanation for how a president at an enviable peak of popularity just months before could go down to ignominious defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton, many have pointed to Bush 41 being “out of touch” because he was famously unfamiliar with the newfangled supermarket scanners. But in the end, Bush was defeated in large part because of the most infamous broken promise in memory, delivered in his signature moment at the 1988 Republican National Convention: Read my lips, no new taxes!

Fast forward 32 years, and in his inaugural address of 2020, Joe Biden employed the word unity – or the equivalent – a record 19 times, continuing the overarching theme of his presidential campaign. It was designed to draw a striking contrast to Donald Trump. But from the moment he entered the Oval Office, Biden has not only broken the promise to unify the country. He has done the opposite, ostracizing and scandalizing the opposition to a degree we have never before witnessed, culminating with his McCarthyite description of “MAGA Republicans” as semi-fascist, lawless, violent reprobates and ultimately a “threat to the republic.”

Biden and Bush Betrayal

While the promises of Bush and Biden are in some ways different - one was a specific, measurable pledge, the other intangible but unconditional - they are absolutely analogous because they were delivered as solemn promises which served as the cornerstones of their campaigns, and much of the basis of their appeal to the public. And now we can’t help but wonder if Democrats will pay a steep price, as Bush did, when they try to maintain control of Congress in the upcoming midterms and then Biden or his successor nominee attempt to extend their hold on the White House in 2024 after delivering the polar opposite of what they promised: threatening, incendiary rhetoric about their opponents, now treated as enemies. And the irony is that the target of these attacks, Donald Trump, actually delivered, or seriously attempted to deliver, on almost all of his incredibly ambitious promises while running for president.

Biden’s willingness for the sake of political expediency to say anything to get elected, and then reverse field once the voters have bought what he was selling, reveals a cancerous cynicism about the political process. And it is starkly reflected in a precipitous decline in trust for institutions whose credibility had gone unchallenged for our entire lives. The Supreme Court is now more unpopular than ever, with a shockingly low 38% approval in one recent poll, exactly half of the 76% who approved 35 years ago, according to Gallup. Confidence in the military has descended to its lowest level – 61% – since they started measuring it in 2001. And approval of Congress dropped as low as 16% in June of this year.

This erosion of trust has taken hold not from the bottom up, but the top down. As failed presidential candidate Michael Dukakis famously asserted in his campaign against Bush 41, the fish rots from the head. And the betrayal of those elected to the presidency, treating solemn promises as little more than clever vehicles for telling persuadable voters what they want to hear, breeds a greater erosion of trust than at any level of government, and it’s not hard to understand why. This single chief executive holding the highest office in the land with its seemingly limitless power requires a level of trust from the voters unmatched by any position lower on the political totem pole.

The extent to which the electorate punishes Biden and his party in 2022 and 2024 for balkanizing the nation is as yet unknown. But unwitting voters innocently believed Biden was serious about being a moderate and not a progressive, about promoting unity over division, and about building consensus instead of advancing a radical agenda. And now he has not only refused to fulfill his most fundamental promises – but he has also actively pursued the opposite path, which if revealed in running for office, would have disqualified him. But as the late George H.W. Bush found out the hard way, the voters remember well what was promised, and what was delivered, when they next enter the voting booth.