The Right Side of History
I admit it. I was worn down, maybe even beaten down. Maybe you were too. After a hopeful late summer and endless early fall, after a buoyant campaign of joy and optimism about our future, we had suffered a brutal defeat; and not just any defeat, but defeat by the forces of hate and division and just plain meanness. Nor had we lost by the manipulation of an antediluvian electoral college, but by the majority of voters. For many of us, it was a time to turn a deaf ear to the politics of the country; for others, a time to turn inward, or, in Voltaire’s words, to cultivate our gardens. Maybe we hadn’t lost the war, but we had certainly lost the battle; and the consequences of the loss, for those of us of a certain age, meant that our last best hope of change might have to be deferred to the next generation. Then came Monday, and the news that President Biden had cleared the great majority of the federal death row.
What does all this mean for the future of capital punishment? Let’s put that discussion off for a bit, as it might dampen the news many of us had been hoping for, the news that has arrived two days before Christmas. By commuting thirty-seven death sentences, President Biden has moved 180 degrees from the “super predator” spewing, Clarence Thomas protecting, legislative poison pill (AEDPA) passing politician to the faith-filled leader who this morning stepped into the breach when we needed it and cemented his legacy in one fell swoop.
Would Biden do what so many people, including the Pope, were urging him to do? With all the talk of expanding capital punishment on one side and deafening silence on the other, it was easy to be pessimistic. After all, the Democrats had gone so far as to remove their anti-capital punishment plank from the party’s platform. Monday we got our answer. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” Biden said, sticking his thumb in the eye of our despicable president-elect. But there was more than simple politics at play in his announcement to spare the lives of thirty-seven men. It’s impossible for us to know precisely what the President was thinking, or the factors that had the most influence on his decision. Perhaps, as he said, he was simply guided by his conscience and his experience. Whatever it was that drove him to his momentous decision, one thing is certain: the President showed the world just how easy it is to be on the right side of history.