This is why it's so hard to pick good leaders

Biden was always going to pardon Hunter. Corruption is not the exception, it's the rule.

The cream rises to the top, goes the old saw. You know who believes that? Donald J. Trump. “Either you have it or you don't. And that is why most kids can get straight A's in school but fail in life.” And when someone like Joe Biden, who never lost a general election (but has lost primaries) in his life, spent seven full terms in the U.S. Senate, then four years as Vice President, before winning the presidency in 2020, surely that’s proof the cream rises. Biden didn’t even technically lose the 2024 election: he never made it to the ballot.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, United States, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

You know what else rises to the top: turds in a septic tank, when there’s a lot of trapped gas. (If this actually happens to you, call a professional.) Of course Joe Biden was going to pardon Hunter before he left office. It was always so. I don’t necessarily blame him, because Hunter is his only surviving son. Joe Biden has led a tragic life, punctuated by a fatal accident in 1972 that claimed his first wife and oldest daughter, and the death of his oldest son, Beau, from brain cancer in 2015. Hunter was a screw-up most of his life, but there is no way in God’s green earth that Joe Biden was not going to pardon him since he possesses the ultimate power to do so.

The political cost of the pardon is predictable. Yes, Republicans and right-wing media are going to rooster-crow about it—but I’m talking about Democrats. Rep. Marie Glusenkamp Perez posted on X/Twitter: “The President made the wrong decision. No family should be above the law.” Sen. Michael Bennett of Colorado said the “decision put personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all.” The list goes on. It’s all reported in the New York Times.

And you know what? Yada, yada, yada. So what? This was not hard to predict. In fact, if there was a way to get an accurate poll of fathers and ask them, “if you had the unreviewable power to pardon your son of crimes he committed, and then you got to retire comfortably afterward, would you do it?” I bet 95 percent of dads would go for “yes” without thinking. “But what about trust in government?” Please. We don’t pick leaders from the five percent who would let the law rule over their own kid. In fact, most of the people who would answer that way would never run for high office in the first place.

Kevin D. Williamson wrote a screed against “The Aristocrats” in The Dispatch yesterday. He got his shorts in a twist over the Kennedys, the Bidens, the Trumps, the Clintons (especially), and even hit the Bushes. These families and their kids, and the generations of rich, entitled, nepotistic dynasties seem to have caused a rash in Williamson’s soul, and he could not stop scratching. I don’t know why Williamson is so surprised that dynasties turn to a pile of excrement, morally speaking.

You won’t get any argument from me that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a nutcase and should not be anywhere near the levers of power. Or that Donald J. Trump should not be preparing his sons (even Barron!) to carry on the Trump dynasty as if he was a Kennedy himself. But the fact that these families, with their money and their power and fame, are corrupt does not come as some kind of shock to me. Robber barons beget robber barons, and some—only some—are taken by a spirit of generosity. The rest are as corrupt as the fentanyl dealer sitting outside your kid’s school.

We like to sweetly praise the Carnegies and Gettys and the Gunds, and the new money Gates Foundation. But there’s also the Clinton Foundation, which for years served as a slush fund for all kinds of back room corruption and deals, some involving the same people and companies that lavished cash on Hunter Biden. Notice that we never elected a Carnegie or a Getty or a Gates to high office, either. And as much as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are super-rich, they are not known for their unbridled charity. George Soros gives a lot away, but it’s all political triangulation. And even those people, had they the power to pardon their own kids (or to “buy” a pardon from someone who can), would waste no time getting the ink dry.

Do you know the story of Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last ruler of the Hawaiian Kingdom? During her reign, she started a bank for women. She established a trust in 1909, called the Liliʻuokalani Trust, which still provides for Hawaiian children. She was a good queen, who built hospitals and schools for her subjects. She was overthrown by the United States, who send Marines in to secure the island for plantation owners. Nobody elected Liliʻuokalani, but she’s the kind of leader we should elect. The U.S. annexed Hawaii in 1898, when William McKinley was president.

McKinley aggressively expanded the country, and defeated Spain to grab the Philippine Islands, along with Guantanamo Bay in Cuba (which we still claim as ours), Puerto Rico and Guam. He also raised tariffs to pay for his war. He’s the kind of guy Donald Trump would say has “it.” Of course, a disgruntled anarchist with a .32 revolver shot McKinley on September 14, 1901, and McKinley died eight days later. I’m sure whatever reward McKinley earned or was pardoned for, he went to when he met his maker.

Americans are more likely to elect a McKinley than a Liliʻuokalani. And people with power and money are more likely to be corrupt than to be philanthropists. Joe Biden, with his many decades in government, made a lot of money while he was in office. You won’t be able to convince me that some of the cash Hunter swam in didn’t find its way into Joe’s pockets. It did.

The Clintons, the Kennedys, the Bidens, the Trumps, and yes, even the Bushes, put profit and personal gain ahead of duty and service to country. It’s how these things work, even when some of the people (George H.W. Bush, notably) are arguably more duty-minded than others. There are no George Washingtons today. There are no Abe Lincolns, either.

This is why it’s so hard to pick good leaders. The pool we have to pick from is not the one where the cream float to the top. We have to pick from the cesspool, and what we get floating to the top is what you see in office. The good ones, they are the ones who get canceled, discouraged, disparaged, and defenestrated. On rare occasions, we get a hold of one. This is not one of those occasions.

So, no, I am not surprised Joe pardoned Hunter. This was never even a close call. Neither will it be a close call when Trump does worse things in office.

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