PITTSBURGH (TNS) — “There were a lot of very sick people tonight,” said the Emergency Department nurse, explaining why my friend had to wait six hours to be seen. She’d had a test on Tuesday afternoon that so concerned her doctor he told her to go straight to the ED.
The signs on the ED waiting room walls declared that patients were seen in order of medical need, not in order of arrival. My friend’s condition was “subacute,” the triage nurse said, which put her at the end of the queue after all the very sick people whose condition was “acute.”
And of course rightly. You get some idea from sitting in the waiting room for hours how very sick very sick people can be. We felt anxious, knowing my friend might be getting worse as we sat there. But she had to wait her turn.
NEEDS AND STATUS
It matters that no one gets special treatment in the emergency department, that need determines status and not, as in so much of life, status that decides access. Connections don’t let anyone jump the queue. The homeless man goes before the CEO if he needs care sooner.
That at a point at which the most vulnerable people need help, need trumps everything, says something good about America. This idea of human equality in the provision of public goods, this conviction that power does not grant the powerful special privileges, is central to the American vision. (However much the nation has failed, and continues to fail, to live by it.)
It’s the logical and moral development of the Declaration of Independence’s claim that all men are created equal and the idea of the free citizen behind the Constitution’s wonkery.
One natural expression of this belief is the principle that no one can use his power to get something he shouldn’t have or shouldn’t have before others who need it more. To put it another way: people with public power must not use it for private purposes.
We can see the principle in what we expect of those with public power, especially people we’ve elected to serve the nation, and how angry we get when someone abuses his position. Abuse of position and power accounts for most of the scandals that light up the news. If you want to create agreement in a group of strangers, bring up an example of such abuse.
BIDEN THREW IT OUT
We expect — expect in the sense of a non-negotiable demand — the emergency department to triage patients by how sick they are. We expect doctors to treat everyone without paying the least bit of attention to their race, national origin, sex, gender, ethnicity, belief, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, much less to their power and wealth or what the patient can do for them.
We expect the police to enforce the law whoever breaks it, and not to target one group of people and let others go. We expect the same of district attorneys and attorneys general. We expect our politicians and civil servants to work impartially, for the common good, and not have their hands in the till and dispense favors to their friends and supporters.
President Joe Biden threw out that fundamental commitment in using his presidential power to help his son, to shield him from the legal consequences of his actions. He used his office to get something for himself.
This abuse of power is especially bad when the president does it. In our system as it’s developed, the president is not just the head of one branch of government. He’s an exemplar of America’s beliefs and ideals and therefore what the president does affects what many Americans think. I don’t like this, but I think it’s built into being a head of state.
AN EXCUSE FOR TRUMP
That kind of action has its effects, usually bad ones. Trump has always had trouble distinguishing Trump the president from Trump the enterprise. As he begins his second reign, we needed a strong defensive wall against his desire to use his office for his own purposes. Biden dynamited that.
Any complaint that Trump is abusing his powers as president will be met with “But Biden.” The two cases will be different in motive and effect, but that doesn’t matter. When you flagrantly reject a fundamental principle, even in a small and understandable matter, you’ve rejected the principle.
Especially when you’re the President of the United States and you’d made a very big deal of your respect for the law and the legal system.
People less principled than you will feel free to invoke you as a model for their own lawlessness. You will have given up your authority to defend the principle and criticize those who break it. They’re just doing what you did. That you don’t like it means nothing.
It was grimly ironic to find some of Biden’s supporters arguing that Trump had done the same thing. Of course he did. But when your guy’s abuse of power forces you to use Trump as a moral benchmark, Donald Trump has truly won.
Joe Biden could have been an exemplar of the respect for the law our system requires. We badly needed that. Instead, in using his power to pardon his son, Joe Biden failed the nation.
(David Mills is the Post-Gazette’s deputy editorial page editor and a weekly columnist.)
