RUTHFULLY YOURS

At 11:47 a.m. on January 20, 2021, Joe Biden swore an oath before his God and his country: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” At the heart of the duties imposed by that oath is Article II, Section 3, of that Constitution, which requires of the president that he “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Not some of the laws, but all of them. He is not charged with making those laws: He can veto bad laws that are presented to him by Congress, and he can recommend that bad laws be repealed or reformed, but so long as the laws made by Congress are on the books, it is his sworn, solemn, constitutional duty to take care that they be faithfully executed. This is why Americans used to refer to the president as the country’s “chief magistrate.”

Biden has repeatedly proven himself to be a rogue president contemptuous of his oath. He has, on several occasions now, exceeded his powers by trying to make laws rather than enforce them — and he has repeatedly done so even when he, his legal advisers, and/or the leaders of his party in the Congress acknowledge that he has no power to do so. He did not have the power to make national housing laws, yet he decreed that landlords could not evict deadbeat tenants. He did not have the power to make national medical decisions, yet he ordered every workplace to mandate vaccinations. He did not have the power to appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars to pay off college debts, but he did that, too. The courts have struck down the first two of those flagrant violations of his oath, and only the search for a proper party with standing to sue presents any real risk that they will not strike down the third.

The president’s pardon power, however, is a practically monarchical power, and the courts cannot remedy its abuse; only Congress can do so. Biden apparently now thinks we should not have federal laws against possession of marijuana. He should ask Congress to repeal those laws, which he had a major hand in writing during his 36 years in the Senate. If Congress did repeal them, Biden might have a case for making that repeal effectively retroactive via a blanket presidential pardon.

But that would require Biden to acknowledge that the Constitution allows Congress to make the laws, and requires presidents to enforce them. Instead, he simply issued over 6,000 pardons, and in so doing, sent a clear message that he will consider those laws nullified going forward. He refuses to take care that the laws be executed; he is taking care that they be flouted, and stripping Congress of the power to decide whether to repeal them.

We have, for various reasons — many of them bad — settled on a national bipartisan consensus that we do not use impeachment to remove presidents from office, only to accuse them of things in order to prosecute arguments with the voters. That is not how the Founders saw the remedy of impeachment. If we still took such things seriously, Biden’s repeated and open violation of his oath of office, his constitutional obligations, and the constitutional limits on his office would richly merit his impeachment and removal. As things stand, the only remedies we have for a president who routinely rejects the rule of law are to take him to court and take the case for a restoration of the Constitution to the voters.