President Biden grows angrier by the hour at pro-life Americans, demonizing them and striking fear into the heart of his base. Gone is the Senator Biden who once straddled the two factions — and our nation sure could use him.This was the man who declared in his inaugural address, “[M]y whole soul is in this: Bringing America together, uniting our people and uniting our nation. I ask every American to join me in this cause.”Governing Americans is like herding cats, and that rhetoric is catnip. It’s what he promised on the stump in 2020: The civility, normalcy, and decorum of the Senate ideal as an alternative to President Trump’s big top circus.Candidate Biden is unrecognizable from the Archie Bunker-in-chief who railed at the draft majority opinion of the Supreme Court, “[T]his MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history.”You would think that the president would remember the Ku Klux Klan, the militant wing of his own party — or John Brown, anarchists, communists, the Weathermen, and even the Confederacy Mr. Biden boasted that Delaware pined to join.What of the Puerto Rican nationalists who attempted to assassinate President Truman? All were far more violent than people who share the position of such liberal titans as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on returning the issue of abortion to the states.Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito quoted Justice Ginsburg saying, “halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believed, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.”Returning the issue to the people by overturning Roe would, as my late boss Rush Limbaugh used to say, sap the contentiousness from the issue the way it has in other nations where the ballot decided the issue, not nine men in black robes.In seeking a settlement agreeable to all, Justice Ginsburg and radio’s greatest of all time sounded a lot like Senator Biden who met with pro-lifers seeking an abortion ban in 1973 and told them, “I am not sure my stand against such a constitutional amendment is right.“Nor am I sure the anti-abortions stand is right.” In that same interview with the Washingtonian, Mr. Biden added, “I don’t think a woman has a sole right to say what should happen to her body.”Senator Biden even voted to overturn Roe in 1982. The National Abortion Rights Action League called it “the most devastating attack yet on abortion rights,” and yet “Amtrak Joe” survived through sheer political skill.When endorsing Mr. Biden for president, Senator Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said, “I don’t know of a more experienced, better person — a more decent person — in politics. He’s smart, he understands, he listens.”Although Mr. Hagel opposed MAGA, the only reason it matters that someone listens and understands is when they listen and understand people who disagree, not turn a deaf ear.Imagine President Biden repeating Senator Biden’s statements that he was “really quite conservative,” didn’t like Roe, and thought it “went too far,” using his 50-year change of heart to reach across the aisle.The words “not sure,” “don’t think,” “sole right,” “too far” and “quite” gave Senator Biden wiggle room to jump the barrels of this moment with all the skill of a Donkey Kong champion.Yet rather than offer a soothing balm as he did in the United States Senate, the president has now been pouring salt on the wound, hoping fear will drive women to the polls in the midterms and save his party’s majority.President Biden — like Senator Biden — has never held a private sector job (lifeguard at CornPop’s pool notwithstanding) and the career politician promised he’d be really good at bridging gaps with Republicans.Instead, we’ve gotten an angry old man screaming at citizens to get off the White House lawn, not a man who’s president of all the people. It’s a shame, because, to channel Archie Bunker: Mister, we could use a man like “Amtrak Joe” again.
