One of the many lessons America should have learned from the catastrophic presidency of Donald Trump is that the nation’s political norms are no longer sufficient to ensure a baseline of ethical behavior in Washington. Time and again, Trump trampled those norms, shamelessly using his office to enrich his businesses, coddle his friends and punish his foes.
President Joe Biden has restored respect for those norms with the mere act of behaving like a normal president. And he has used executive orders to shore up ethical standards throughout his administration. The fact that Biden’s critics are grasping at a silly non-scandal over his son Hunter Biden’s art sales just dramatizes how much better the ethics situation has gotten.
But all that will last only as long as this presidency does. Biden promised during the campaign to push a sweeping ethics package through Congress. Six months in, he still hasn’t pursued it. He should, while the urgency of the topic is still fresh.
Trump ran his administration the way he ran his businesses — looking for any angle to benefit himself or his friends, without regard for the ethics of it. He refused to meaningfully separate himself from his businesses, ensuring that lobbyists, foreign governments and others would spend their travel budgets at his hotels and resorts to get in good with the leader of the free world. The military suddenly decided that putting up personnel at Trump properties overseas made sense, even when it didn’t make sense logistically or financially. He stacked his administration with industry shills who, predictably, hollowed out environmental and energy standards. He used his Justice Department like a personal law firm, protecting his cronies and harassing his enemies.
It thus made sense for Biden to prioritize ethics reform during his presidential campaign. His 25-point ethics plan included promises to prohibit foreign governments from hiring lobbyists to influence the U.S. government, cracking down on the influence of personal financial holdings by members of Congress, and — crucially, given Trump’s aggressive attacks against government whistleblowers — creating new whistleblower protections.
Unfortunately, it’s not unusual for presidential candidates to forget their promises once in office. (Remember how Trump was going to be the “infrastructure president”?) But Biden’s failure to follow through on his ethics promises is baffling. The reforms he’s called for don’t have a significant cost. They’re not partisan; there’s no reason to believe the ethics proposals couldn’t get at least the 10 Republican Senate votes they’d need to avoid a filibuster. Yet those proposals are languishing inside a broader, more controversial election-reform package that currently looks unlikely to pass.
Trump’s atrocious ethics highlighted the need for real guardrails to replace the norms the nation thought it could always count on. The fact that Trump is no longer there doesn’t change that need. Biden should get this issue off the back burner, now.
