A tiny electoral majority for Biden does not presage a weak presidency – in fact, the opposite could be true

There are constraints on a US president, but they have to do with those famed ‘checks and balances’ of the US constitution, not with any electoral majority, writes Mary Dejevksy

Performance, rather than vote majority, will determine the success of Joe Biden’s presidency (AFP/Getty)

Amid all the confusion of the past week in American politics, there is one certainty. The next president of the United States will take power in January with the slenderest of electoral mandates.

In most democratic countries, a wafer-thin, or contested, mandate would come with diminished authority and very many constraints. The conclusion would have to be that many of the campaign promises made by the next US president would be subject to negotiation or simply fall away. That might even be considered the more democratic course.

As with so many assumed comparisons between the United States and elsewhere, however, this one is also wide of the mark. Winning only by a hair’s breadth in the electoral college does not necessarily mean a weak presidency.

Once you have won the presidency, you have won. You swear the oath of office; you set the tone for the nation with your inaugural address; and you move into the White House, that global symbol of power. From then on, you enjoy, as is often said of French presidents, an “aura” of office. A certain distance sets you apart.

Some presidents, it is true, have more of an aura than others. But it has nothing to do with the margin of their victory or, a term we have heard repeatedly in recent days, their path to power. It depends entirely on the president and how he – so far always a “he” – approaches the job. Performance is key. Donald Trump was, how shall we say, an unusual incumbent. But there could be no doubting, at any point, that he was president. The same would apply to a President Biden.

There are constraints on a US president, but they have to do with those famed “checks and balances” of the US constitution – the legislature and the Supreme Court – not with any electoral majority. Because legislators are elected separately from the president and for different tenures, the two Houses of Congress may reinforce the president’s power; equally, though, they may not.

If Joe Biden becomes president, he will have a majority Republican Senate to deal with, but a sympathetic, majority Democrat, lower House. Many of Trump’s woes had their origin in an extremely hostile House, and a Senate where Republicans were never wholly behind him.

Trump also found himself at odds with the Supreme Court, especially in the early days, when he tried to bar migrants from mostly Muslim countries. This was partly because he had inherited a Supreme Court with a majority not of his persuasion. Similarly, a President Biden will inherit a Supreme Court unbalanced, or rebalanced – however you look at it – by conservatives nominated by Trump. This is one of the deliberate quirks of the US system; for reasons largely of mortality, the Supreme Court can be wondrously out of tune with the administration of the day.

But it is the mark of a strong, or at least of an effective, president to use, and to test, the power of his own office in relation to these institutions. Joe Biden is seen, for better or worse, as a politician of the old school. “Decency” was a word much bandied about by his supporters in the latter stages of this year’s campaign. Decency, though, is not necessarily going to secure an easier ride with a critical Congress.

Biden’s far bigger asset in pursuing his programme is his long experience of Washington politics and his ability –  indeed preference, it is said – for “reaching across the aisle”. This is reportedly a reason why Barack Obama, only a first-term US senator when he ran for president, chose Biden as his running mate. Another president who was good at this was George W Bush. Bill Clinton had to learn it; Richard Nixon never mastered it, which may be one reason – not the only reason, of course – why he left office as he did.

Donald Trump has been an unconventional president in so many ways, not least in the immediacy and bluntness of his communication, whether with his fellow countrymen or other world leaders. His approach to Congress and the courts has also at times been confrontational. But it would be wrong to accuse him of actually flouting either the constitution or the law during his time in office (his tax affairs out of office are another matter). In fact, the constitution has withstood the Trump challenge pretty well.

Yes, Trump has tested the limits of a president’s power, but the Supreme Court has had the last word. As for misconduct in office, he was impeached, like Bill Clinton before him, and found not guilty by the majority Republican Senate (as Clinton was by a friendly Senate). The system worked as it was supposed to. And the same is likely to happen in the unlikely event that this presidential election ends up in the Supreme Court.

Among his assets, at least in Washington, could be, first, that he is simply not Donald Trump Part II, and, second, that he probably does not have his eye on a second term

The US electoral system has many faults. Voter registration is inadequate; social injustice is reinforced by the error-prone barring of convicted criminals from the electoral rolls and the paucity of polling stations in poorer areas. The electoral college may indeed be unsuited to an age in which direct democracy is more the norm. But even a president as wayward as Trump has not broken the system; if anything, his excesses have proved its worth.

He used the power of his office to the full, especially in his reorientation of US foreign policy, and a consequence could be that, with time, he will be seen as a strong, change-making president, even though, as Democrats never ceased to remind him, he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

Similarly, Joe Biden does not have to be a weak president. An obvious way for him to make his mark early on is to capitalise on his history of bipartisanship, and seek Congressional consensus, whether for addressing the aftermath of the pandemic at home or for rebuilding at least some of the country’s damaged alliances abroad. Among his assets, at least in Washington, could be, first, that he is simply not Donald Trump Part II, and, second, that he probably does not have his eye on a second term.

Some will say that US politics is just too polarised for this sort of approach, as shown by the election. Maybe. But too much may also have been made by an alienated media establishment of the supposed imperative to “heal” divisions. The US two-party system, like its counterpart in the UK, magnifies the political divide, because it offers voters only two alternatives. The political landscape always has more shading. The turnout in this US election may have been the highest for a century, but it was still only 66 per cent. A full third of the electorate did not join the fight.  

A strong president, of course, is not necessarily a great president. My argument is only that a tiny or contested electoral majority need not automatically presage a weak presidency, as might be the case for a prime minister in a parliamentary system. And the reverse can also be true. A US president who sweeps to office on a wave of popular support may coast through his early months, neglecting the hard graft needed to get things done. Neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden would be likely to rest on his laurels – Trump because he is not like that; Biden because he has waited so long. And if it is Biden, then he could turn out to be a man – albeit not a young man –  in a tearing hurry to leave his mark.