President Eisenhower, in his final days in the White House, warned about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” and “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Now, President Biden, in his final days in the Oval Office, is warning about a new threat to the nation’s future.
Biden has declared that the current Supreme Court is “not normal.”
He said it has become so twisted by politics and gift money that it is now undermining public trust in government and “the public’s confidence in court’s decisions…” That strong statement is a landmark moment for U.S. history.
It is in line with the warning from a president and former five-star general about the potentially corrupt power exerted by corporations selling weapons to the U.S. military. Eisenhower’s words remain relevant today, more than six decades after he left office.
This time the warning is coming from a president who served as the Senate Judiciary chairman and ranking member for 14 years and has been involved with, as he put it, “more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today.”
Biden issued his warning after directly citing the Supreme Court ruling that a president is immune from prosecution for breaking the law as an attack on the basic American principle that no man is above the law.
The court ruled that former President Trump and future presidents will be equal to “a king above the law,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in dissent.
It took such an outrageous show of partisan power lust in that ruling to get Biden out of his lifelong refusal to endorse reforms for the high court.
“The decision today has continued the court’s attack in recent years on a wide range of long-established legal principles in our nation, from gutting voting rights and civil rights to taking away a woman’s right to choose,” Biden said right after the court’s crassly political decision that day.
Since then, a Gallup poll shows a majority of voters (52 percent) disapprove of the court’s performance, largely because of the two controversial rulings, beginning with ending nearly 50 years of federal protection for abortion rights and now extending to putting a president above the law, like a “king,” according to Justice and presidential immunity.
The public distaste is fueled by the court’s outlandish behavior. Two of the current justices and their wives are awash in controversy over open shows of partisanship. Justice Thomas is also dogged by stories of accepting gifts and financial favors from a wealthy patron.
Most incredibly, the chief justice refuses to do anything about the loss of public trust in the court and, by extension, in the founding principle that the U.S. is a nation of laws and not of men’s political whims.
Add to that boiling pot of trouble the court’s politically driven rulings overturning decades of legal precedent on abortion and presidential immunity.
The only defense of this court comes from right-wing opinion leaders, who argue that Biden simply dislikes decisions made by a conservative majority court. But they are closing their eyes to genuine public concern.
Biden is reflecting overwhelming concern about something much bigger — the high court losing the trust of the American public.
Last month, Gallup showed that 52 percent of Americans disapprove “of the way the court is handling its job.” That fits with a Fox News poll from last month that found 60 percent of Americans disapproved of the court among voters and a Marquette poll from May that found 61 percent disapproval of the current court.
According to Gallup, a majority of Americans have disapproved of the court since President Trump nominated three conservative justices, creating a 6-to-3 majority with a conservative agenda.
Disapproval of the court might be higher, according to Gallup, if not for Republicans who “continue to view the high court positively due to its current ideological makeup, which is the most conservative in nine decades.”
Fox polls reached the same conclusion about the widespread concern about the court: “Seven in ten [71 percent] are extremely or very concerned about the Supreme Court, including 44 percent who are extremely worried,” according to Victoria Balara of Fox News.
Biden’s proposed reforms to the Supreme Court also have wide public support.
Take the three constituent parts of Biden’s Supreme Court reform plan. First, every president gets to appoint one justice for every two years he or she serves. Second, each justice’s tenure is limited to 18 years. Third, justices are subject to binding ethics guidelines, just like the executive branch, legislative branch and lower courts in the judicial branch.
According to a Fox News poll last week, a whopping 78 percent of voters favor 18-year-term limits for Supreme Court Justices — up from 66 percent in July 2022.
“If justices have this much power…[they should] reflect America as it currently is, not the America of 30 or 40 years ago, the dead hand of the president who appointed still influencing policy,” Gabe Roth, executive director of ‘Fix the Court,’ told the Associated Press.
It is time for order in the court — the Supreme Court.
Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.