Sydney Williams: Some Friendly Advice for President Biden
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Right after President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, Rahm Emanuel, who served as White House Chief of Staff, famously said to never let a crisis go to waste. This evening, President Biden, facing the crisis that is Ukraine, should heed that advice when he speaks to the nation.
In a flurry of woke progressivism, the Administration has lost its way. The southern border is inundated by unvetted, unvaccinated illegal immigrants. Inflation is at 40-year highs. Schools that teach Critical Race Theory and encourage students to question their genders are upsetting parents. Crime rates have soared, especially in low-income areas of inner cities. People have grown weary of mask and vaccine mandates. School test scores, already low, have declined further.
Democrats, to survive in November, should go back to their roots of being the Party for working people – the middle class, small business owners, people who do not have the luxury to work remotely or send their children to private schools. They should abandon their left-wing, authoritarian over-reach. Despite being well-funded, the far-left, as defined by Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of “the Quad,” is represented by only nine percent of voters, according to an op-ed in Saturday’s The Wall Street Journal, an op-ed written by Elaine Kamarck and William Galston, both Democrats.
Over the past several years, Democrats’ constituents have changed. The North East’s country club elites, who fifty years ago were Republicans, have become mainly Democrats. Wealthy Silicon Valley tycoons and Wall Street grandees resemble members of France’s ancien régime, unaware and uncaring of the needs of middle-class Americans, as they moralize behind their gated communities. These woke panjandrums were educated in elite universities by professors who abandoned classical liberalism to become intolerant of opposing opinions.
America is a centrist country, composed of middle-class, working Americans, many of whom have service jobs in hotels, restaurants and casinos. They drive taxis, buses and trucks. They work in hospitals, on road construction crews and in sewer treatment plants. This has meant that during the pandemic they either had to be at work or they did not get paid. It is estimated that more than a third of all American workers labor full or part time in the gig economy, many with multiple jobs, trying to stay ahead of rising inflation. Too many government rules, and demands for unionization, make their lives unnecessarily difficult. Thirty million small businesses, who employ almost half of all workers, are often ignored by politicians and harmed by complex regulations, which too often favor larger, better funded competitors.
Joe Biden ran as a centrist on a platform that called for unity. Instead, he has heeded the call from the Party’s far left, with its woke message of division, with authoritarian overtones – censorship in schools, colleges, publishing houses, television, corporate boardrooms and social media; cancellation of speakers, careers and books that do not conform to the preferred message. Wokeism elevates race and gender over initiative and merit.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should serve as a call to return to the center – that the nation’s enemies are neither school parents in Virginia nor truckers heading to Washington, D.C. Our enemies are those who threaten our democratic republic – Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Cuba. For years, our capitalistic system, where individuals are free to innovate and compete, has reduced poverty and lifted hopes around the world. The people in Ukraine, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, who lived under the Soviet Union, have witnessed what socialism does to one’s life. That is why they look west, not east. They understand better than the Sanders and the AOCs what happens when democracy fails, and authoritarianism prevails.
In his speech tonight, Mr. Biden has a chance to change course and gain the center. But will he? Will he remember the words of President Reagan, that “military strength is a prerequisite for peace?” Will he urge more oil and gas production to lower world prices, helping consumers and hurting Putin’s pocketbook? Will he stand with one of the world’s few Jewish heads of state, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, or will he let another domino fall in the collapse of the world’s democracies? Will he abandon leftist policies that have increased crime in inner cities, let in millions of undocumented migrants, brought inflation to all, and, by putting identity politics and the “Green New Deal” ahead of defense spending, weakened our military? Will he follow Theodore Roosevelt’s advice to speak softly but carry a big stick, or will he bellow while he carries a twig? Will he reach out to Independents and Republicans? Will he remind us that the nation’s power is embedded in its people? Will he act as a unifier, or will he continue as a divider?
The problem of extremism is not limited to Democrats. Republicans have them as well, but they are neither so well-funded, nor as embedded in our culture as are Democrat extremists. I do not hold out much expectation that Mr. Biden will follow this advice; if he does not, that will be good for Republicans. But he has the opportunity to improve his Party’s chances in 2022 and 2024. It will be seizure of the middle that will win future elections.
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