It’s easy to empathize with a father wanting the best for his son.
Less so for a president who disregards the judicial system with such flagrant nepotism.
In pardoning his son, Joe Biden has asked Americans to understand why a father and a president would come to such a decision.
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Biden has made himself an easy target by allowing self-interest to taint his final days in the White House and offering his political enemies a free hit after the party he has given his life to has taken such a beating.
He may be old, but he’s not a fool. He stuck out his jaw expecting to be punched.
That doesn’t mean we should keep kicking him when he’s down.
Few will sympathize with Hunter Biden. His life of privilege has been pockmarked with drug taking and infidelity, and the lasting shame of becoming the first child of a sitting U.S. leader to be convicted of a federal crime.
But I’m willing to bet that we will be kinder to his father after all the outrage has died down.
This is a man who once took a train from D.C. to Wilmington, Delaware, on the eve of his daughter Ashley’s 8th birthday to blow the candles out on her cake at the station before catching another train right back to the Capitol minutes later.
Ashley Biden tells the story now as a tribute to her father, but it also offers a glimpse both of his dilemma and his priorities as an avowed family man and as a public servant. As much as he loves his children, he has always put his country first.
When a tragic car crash took the lives of his first wife, Neilia, and their baby daughter, Naomi, just six weeks after his election to the Senate in 1972, Biden took his oath of office by the bedside of sons Hunter and Beau, who were injured in the collision.
His early years in the Senate were characterized by his commute home to Delaware to be a caring single dad to his traumatized boys. He kept going back to the Senate because he wanted to make a difference.
Beau Biden’s death from brain cancer in 2015 rocked his father to the core and then became the driving force in his subsequent runs for the presidency.
Whatever your politics, it’s been hard watching an eminently honest, compassionate man’s precipitous fall from the nation’s highest seat, pushed by the expediency of his own party and the voracious ambitions of his opponents.
Biden’s work in Washington is done. He will spend his final weeks as a lame-duck president waiting for Donald Trump to take apart his legacy piece by piece.
He may have asked Trump if he planned to pardon Hunter. Trump might even have done it. The president-elect was uncharacteristically uncritical of Biden’s announcement on Sunday, no doubt pleased his old foe had paved the way for his clemency for the Jan. 6 jailbirds.
But ultimately Biden couldn’t risk it. As much as he loves this country and as much as he loved being president, his family is now all he has left. He will take that train to Delaware on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, and it is quite likely he will never return.
Joe Biden has given this country more than 50 years of public service.
Let’s give him this.
