Battle Over Biden’s Legacy - UVA Professor Lawless and GoLocal’s Fenton Debate
Battle Over Biden’s Legacy - UVA Professor Lawless and GoLocal’s Fenton Debate
Regularly, presidential scholars rank the presidents. The most recent C-Span list has the top presidents from the best to 41st. Abraham Lincoln was ranked as the greatest president, and James Buchanon was last.
The last ranking was published in 2021. SEE THAT LIST HERE.
“There's obviously clear, clear signs that [President Biden's] mental faculties are greatly diminished. Is this going to go well in the long term as those presidential scholars look back and rate the presidents? Is Joe Biden going to be in the top half of the presidents or in the bottom half?” asked Fenton.
“He'll definitely be in the top half. Let me make two points. The first is the Constitution obviously gives Congress more power than the president. Presidents over time and the presidency as an institution have tried to claw back a lot of that power, but one thing that the constitution is clear on is pardons and commuting sentences, and the reason that Joe Biden commuted the sentences of those 37 people on federal death row were twofold. First, there are issues with the federal death penalty,” said Lawless.
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW ABOVE
“But second, when Donald Trump was elected and became president the first time around, he executed more people in a shorter period of time than multiple presidents maybe that had ever been executed through the federal death penalty. I don't remember the exact statistic and [Trump] said he was going to do it again and so this is a president who takes law and order to a new level and who seems to get pleasure and joy from being able to make those kinds of decisions and so there were a lot of people; this was not just Joe Biden,” said Lawless.
“There were lots of organizations out there — the American Civil Liberties Union — a lot of Democratic organizations, a lot of organizations that care about criminal justice reform, who understand especially racial disparities throughout the entire sentencing process, who were putting pressure on the president and he had made it clear that he had qualms about the federal death penalty as well, so I don't think that that's a big surprise especially what Donald Trump had done,” added Lawless.
Mental Faculties — Who Was Leading the Country
Lawless defends Biden’s four years in office.
“We're sort of all mired in what happened from June 27th (the presidential debate] until the election day and beyond. So the last six months of Joe Biden's presidency were problematic, but when historians look back, and when presidential scholars look back, they're also going to look at the legislative accomplishments that happened over the first two years and frankly even the first three and a half years of the administration,” said Lawless.
Fenton responded, “The special prosecutor [Robert Hur] investigated Joe Biden's management of presidential documents stored in his garage, in offices, etc. He did not move forward with sanctions against [Biden] but he did outline in his report years that earlier in an interview the president was mentally deficient — that he couldn't remember basic dates, confused on basic facts, milestones in his life including the death of his son Beau.”
“As presidential papers come out, datebooks come out, and notes from meetings come out, isn't there a real concern that the president's mental faculties weren't just [diminished] from the presidential debate? It's going to go back years and years and while the staff kept everything together. Joe Biden's legacy is going to be that for the vast majority of his entire term as president, he was not functioning at a capable level?” asked Fenton.
“I don't think we have any evidence of that, I really don’t,” defended Lawless.
“Well, I just cited one,” said Fenton.