Mr Biden — Please Don’t Become a FOaM President
By: Stephen Warrior
Tags: President, Mexico, Democracy, History, USA

There are moments in history when a key politician can lead society through a choice between two starkly contrasting futures. Failing to deliver can forever stain his legacy.

The US is going through one of those moments: will it choose to continue to be a country of laws — whose disobedience carries consequences — or not. Based on his conciliatory words, some might think that Mr Biden cannot see it. The below former presidents failed to grasp their respective momentous opportunity. They failed because they were FOaM presidents.

M

Francisco I. Madero is remembered as the first Mexican president to be freely and democratically elected after Porfirio Díaz’s 35-year dictatorship in 1911. Under Díaz, the country industrialized, but political opposition was silenced and elites helped oppress workers and indigenous communities. Therefore, when Madero appeared on the national stage, many believed that real change was within reach.

However, Madero won because different factions saw an opportunity to align behind him to remove Díaz, only to try to impose their own candidate later. In fact, as president, Madero spent so much time trying to appease the elites, that he did not address the social grief.

Therefore, Madero is also remembered as an idealist who promised too much, but delivered too little. He thought that, once Díaz were removed from office, Mexico would magically change. Instead, he failed to see the trap he was getting into. Roughly a year later, Madero and his vice president were forced to resign, imprisoned and then executed.

F

Vicente Fox is coincidentally remembered as the first president from an opposition party to be freely and democratically elected in Mexico, almost 100 years after Madero’s successful election, to end the PRI’s 71-year hold of power in 2000. Similarly as in the time of Madero, the hopes for Fox’s triumph were high: that he would restore democracy and end the blatant government corruption. And, similarly, as in the time of Madero, several factions aligned with Fox.

But Fox was not a social or a political reformist. He simply believed the PRI needed to get out of the way and things would improve. He even believed that addressing old grievances was not good for the country, so he chose not to cleanse the government or prosecute prominent officials. Thus, he failed to deliver a more inclusive economy and a more just society, to the point that the PRI was able to return to power only six years after Fox’s successor.

O

Barack Obama is an example closer to home. During his 2008 campaign, his promise of “Hope” resonated with many in the US and abroad. So much so that even the Nobel Committee believed decided to award him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, not even a year into his first term.

But Obama, just as Fox and Madero, promised too much and delivered too little in terms of substantive change. As Fox and Madero, he was too naïve to think that, just because he took office, the world would change. What is worse, his shortcomings led millions to support the candidate who would then become the worst president in US history only eight years later. This is not a coincidence.

Power is meant to be used — or you lose it. Obama could have used his mandate from the voters to immediately correct many loopholes that later led to the type of legal and constitutional crises we witnessed these past four years.

There is no “B” in “FOaM”

Fox, Obama and Madero failed to grasp the full criticality of their respective periods in spite of what their respective proclamations seemed to announce. That makes them like foam: foam appears to be larger than its true substance; because foam is, well, inflated — that is, full of air.

But there is no “B” in “FOaM”, Mr Biden. Therefore, I hope the above can help you avoid the same mistakes.

Therefore, please do use the power you have for good, with a firm hand to make sure that real, solid guardrails exist to protect our democracy, through…

· …closing the legal loopholes that allowed the Trump phenomenon to happen

· …bringing the enablers to justice

· …regulating social media companies through existing advertising and publishing laws

· …eliminating the excessive influence money has on politics

The honor system is not a real system; democracy ought to rely on actual laws and mechanisms of rights and duties, of privileges and obligations, where the quality of the decision determines the quality of the consequence.

Therefore, Mr Biden, please don’t become a FOaM president.