Morals, Ethics, and Political Families

American Eclectic posts articles twice a month, on the 1st and 15th. This is the second year of publication; previously published articles can be found on my site.

August 15, 2023

I have read a great deal by this point about Hunter Biden and the Republican claims that he should be seen as part of a larger “Biden family” corruption scheme.  No doubt the term “Biden family” was test marketed by some Republican media consultants and it played well so we see it used widely.  I guess we can assume it will be used even more as we enter 2024 and see the ratcheting up in political rhetoric aiming toward the Presidential election.

In reading about Hunter Biden, all I see is a manipulative son, who used the death of his brother, his mother, and his younger sister.  The deaths of his family members are a nightmare no husband or father should ever have to face.  Despite that, all I see is this manipulative son who has a father who failed to stand up and tell him to move on with his life in a normal way: A father ended up with was a son with no moral fiber and the father played a role in the outcome of the son he got. As Gail Collins in a New York Times piece wrote, “I’d bet…Hunter dropped Dad’s name a lot when trying to do business with foreign honchos. Sort of hard to imagine him being saintly enough to avoid it.”  From President Biden’s position, I suspect he must wonder nightly what he should have been doing to somehow straighten his kid out years ago.  Forget all the stuff related to reasons why Republicans are going after Hunter Biden, and by way of extension, his father, I suspect he was displaying ways of manipulating his father years ago.

As I read about this father-son interaction I thought of my situation. I had a wife die suddenly and all four of my children were there to find her body.  I can still hear the voice on the phone, “There’s something wrong with mom, she won’t wake up.”  I did not let this tragedy mean that I would allow my children to develop in ways in which I was not there to help them, to guide them.  Three of my children were not yet teenagers when their mother died.  Being a parent and putting in the effort that goes into helping your children develop well is hard enough, doing it after the death of a wife, or a mother, and after children found their mother’s body, was certainly something that I could not have ever imagined would happen.  I bring this up because I use that perspective as my way of looking at a father who, apparently, had no clue how to handle a son who learned that he could manipulate the death of family members to get what he wanted. I was not going to allow a tragedy to get in the way of realizing that someday four children would become adults and they needed to be prepared for that day. Hunter Biden certainly comes across as someone with questionable morals, with no concern about consequences—he comes across as someone who was raised with bad parenting. 

The Biden family dynamics overlaps, well a bit, with that between former President Jimmy Carter and his younger brother Billy.  Billy Carter was seen as a “Good Ole Boy” who enjoyed beer.  As one article described him:

He'd taken our house-warming present-a coffee grinder-and they’d made coffee.  After two sips Billy said it was the best coffee he’d ever had, but ‘bring me a beer.’  We’ve had 25 cases of beer donated for the party.

The younger Carter managed to parlay this image of a beer drinker into a few bucks when he endorsed Billy Beer made by the Falls City Brewing Company.  This lighter side, unfortunately, led to a darker side, when he registered as a foreign agent representing the Libya government.  There was a question regarding the amount Libya either paid or loaned Billy with the amount placed between $220,000 and $2 million.  Obviously, having the brother of the then President representing Muammar Gaddafi was not a wise decision to make.  Gaddafi seized power in a coup in 1969 and ruled the country until he was killed in 2011. The “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution,” as Gaddafi came to title himself, wanted expanded trade with the United States and Billy Carter seemed a way to increase trade.  Carter managed to show his lack of political finesse when he made statements that offended many.  He was asked why he was willing to work with Libya, a country that supported terrorists, Carter responded, “A heap of governments support terrorists.  At least they admit it.”  Members of his brother’s administration tried to get Carter to cut his ties with Libya and he responded that he, “knew more about Libya than all you State Department bureaucrats put together.”  Eventually, Carter checked into a rehab center, probably too many Billy Beers.  The other Carter, the President, had to publicly disavow his brother and state that his brother had no influence on the policies of his administration.  Members of the Carter administration tried to get Billy to stop dealing with Libya, no doubt dollar signs spoke louder than anything coming out of his brother’s administration.

“We don’t get to pick the family we’re born into,” is part of a longer quote that then goes, “But we do get to choose the family we live with.  I choose you.  You’re all that I’ll ever want.”  Well, the first part of the quote is what matters here, Hunter Biden and Billy Carter saw opportunity and did not care about any semblance of morals or ethics, dollar signs were their loadstars.

Billy Carter is just a footnote now in history, but Hunter Biden is the gift that just keeps on giving, if Republicans have their way.  I was thinking of Hillary Clinton and her testimony before Congress in October 2015 addressing the death of four Americans, including an ambassador in Benghazi, Libya.  This was more than 8 hours of testimony, none of it particularly useful, except that it served the purpose of why Republicans held the hearing—to weaken Clinton as she was heading into the Democratic primaries and eventually ran as the party’s candidate for President in 2016.  Hunter Biden will be used in a similar way, after all a lesson had been learned with Clinton’s appearance and it was seen as political damaging to her, so useful to the Republicans.  As one writer put it:

The basic strategy was to attach Benghazi to Clinton personally as a marker of poor character, under-pinned by long-term Republican narratives about the Clintons.

The instrument of this long reach was the House Benghazi Committee, whose main purpose was to keep Benghazi in the public eye as long as possible while serving as a platform from which to search for other material relevant to the 2016 election. The committee hit the jackpot in the form of Clinton’s emails, which quickly outpaced Benghazi in terms of public interest and forced the Republicans to pull back on Benghazi, lest they be accused of overreach. Though the House committee didn’t turn up much in the way of real answers, the emails became a constant refrain of right-wing media and lawmakers (and then-candidate Trump).

Questionable ethics and morals do not just reside with family members of elected Democrats.  Notice that Hunter Biden has never been a member of the Biden administration so the wonderfully useful term “Biden family” allows a broader sweep than just one family member sitting on the outside looking into the White House.  Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald, was connected to companies that got 41 trademarks from the Chinese government—this by April 2019, Trump’s third year as President.  It is not difficult to see the hand of a helpful father and a reciprocal gesture by the Chinese.  The United States penalized a Chinese electronics maker, ZTE for selling to both Iran and North Korea.  But then President Trump indicated he would work with China to help save ZTE.  As Trump stated in a text, “Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!” One hand washes the other. There is Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka, who received a $2 billion investment from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, of Saudi Arabia, half a year after he left the White House.  The money was placed in a private equity firm which was formed by Kushner.  The crown prince was advised against giving the money to Kushner, but he overruled that advice.  As a New York Times article stated, “Ethics experts say that such a deal creates the appearance of potential payback for Mr. Kushner’s actions in the White House.” Together, Ivanka and Jared did quite well financially while they served in the White House. An estimate of how much the couple made is placed at between $172 million and $640 million. The $640 million figure is considered as questionable, but, nevertheless, reduce the actually amount by a few hundred million and anyone of us would be happy to receive it. Furthermore, Jared was involved with a company called Cardre. This real estate company, partially owned by Jared, received funds from the Cayman Islands, a tax haven which meant there was secrecy regarding where the money came from. It appeared Jared made millions from his partial ownership. Apparently, there was no way of knowing if decisions he was making while in the White House were made with his business investments in mind.

Billy Carter would not listen to people in his brother’s administration about dealing with Libya—those dollar signs were too tempting. In the case of Ivanka and Jared, those same dollar signs were as equally alluring.

Politics can pay well under the right circumstances.  I hate all this.  Listening to someone scream about Hunter Biden, a total loser in every way, without looking at Ivanka and Jared Kushner, is politics at the level of manipulation: Look-here-not-there.

So, if Biden gets re-elected am I supposed to believe that the “Biden family” will benefit with Joe back in the White House.  That, as opposed to the “Trump family” hoping to benefit from Donald back in the White House.

I am so glad Republicans voiced loudly that they wanted Ivanka and Jared’s financial gains while in the White House assigned to be investigated by a Special Prosecutor. Oh wait, that did not happen, they were too busy looking away. Now that a Special Prosecutor has been assigned to look into Hunter Biden, I guess Republicans feel that makes up for not showing an ounce of concern about Ivanka and Jared. Recently, Representative James Cromer (R, KY), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, commented on Jared Kushner, receiving the $2 billion from the Saudi prince stating, “I’ve been vocal that I think what Kushner did crossed the line of ethics.” Nice way to throw a bone out there and make it look like a meaningful gift from Cromer and that he has a broad concern about those who use government connections to benefit themselves. I guess that is better than saying nothing, but still there was no push to address Ivanka and Jared when they were in the White House. Cromer will make up for his lack of attention on Ivanka and Jared when it could have mattered, by making sure Hunter is fittingly targeted.

This is not some simple made-for-Fox News-moment of pitting liberals against conservatives and The Five, a panel heavily weighted toward the Republican side, gives their collective judgment against Hunter Biden.

Judicial Watch, a conservative organization, in other words aligned with the Republican Party, has collected over 300,000 signatures that pushed for an investigation of the Bidens, both father and son.

Part of the petition reads:

There is substantial evidence, from documents and witness statements, that the Biden family, including President Joe Biden, may have been involved in criminal activity involving, among other issues, foreign entities tied to Ukraine and China.

Joe Biden's son Hunter has already acknowledged that he is the target of a FBI criminal investigation. 

Saying there is “substantial evidence,” and knowing evidence really exists, are two different things. Instructive about a petition such as this one (which matters little to any Republican investigations into the Bidens) is that it illustrates the look-here-not- there framing of how little ethics and morality matter—in this case to Judicial Watch. The members of this organization have to have known of Trump’s help for Ivanka and Jared, but they practiced the age-old tradition of holding your nose and looking away for political expediency: Biden is corrupt, Trump we will ignore. There is no concern here about corruption in the White House regardless of who is President, only a reason to brand the Bidens as corrupt. Are we to assume if Trump were back in the White House, he would not, yet again, help his family members profit from his position. We can assume that no petition from Judicial Watch aimed against Trump would ever happen if The Donald was President again: Their concern about corruption goes only so far.

I do not want to see an old man, who eats too much junk food, and looks severely out of shape as President.  I am not talking about Biden here, but Trump.  I also do not want to see an old man who should feel good about some of his accomplishments as President, run again.  This old man stuff will fit the same framing as how to look at Presidents and their family members: Look-here-not-there.  You already see it with Republicans wondering if Biden will live through a Second Term.  The same applies to the other old man—those fast-food hamburgers can begin to take their toll.

Ethics in politics, the usual way you see it addressed on television or a well-televised Congressional hearing, is not the way I present it here, as a struggle to realize that choices sometimes come down to the distasteful, the unpleasant, to rationalization.  I see a current President who made bad decisions as a father dealing with a manipulative son and had to be aware that his lack of actions toward his son could come back to bite him politically, and I see a former President who had no qualms about helping a daughter and son-in-law benefit financially.  We are confronted with an either/or choice in our voting so somewhere along the way we learn to fit our beliefs of good and bad, right and wrong to how we vote: There is no alternative.  There is some talk of a Third Party running a candidate, that is not a choice, just a thrown away vote: Candidate A or Candidate B will be President, not Candidate c (yes, small c).

James Clapper wrote in his memoirs about Donald Trump, which raised the issue of Ivanka and Jared. Clapper served under both former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Under Bush he was Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agenc and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and under Obama he was Director of National Intelligence.

We have elected someone as president of the United States whose first instincts are to twist and distort truth to his advantage, to generate financial benefit to himself and his family, and, in so doing, to demean the values this country has traditionally stood for. He has set a new low bar for ethics and morality.

We are probably approaching a moment of all-Hunter-all-the-time, admittedly this is a situation where a father did little to anticipate that this would be coming and appears to have done little to try to prevent it. This is not about ethics and morality, however, just opportunity to use an unscrupulous son to weaken a father heading into a Presidential election season.

There is a wonderful quote from George Mitchell, former senator from Maine and Senate majority leader that is relevant here, “Although he’s regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.” When we address issues of morality and ethics, we may like to believe that by the choice we make in voting, we end up being on the side of the angels, but this is politics, we will be making a choice about why we voted the way we did based on our self-interest. Self-interest is about what we want from those we vote for. People like to believe that those on “the other side” are motivated by self-interest, no reason to look in the mirror and see it in ourselves. No doubt believing in the imagery of red state versus the blue state or reducing complex issues to the simplicity of an ideological battle between liberal versus conservative, helps to cover over what we do not want to face in ourselves.

Despite all this unsavory stuff about unscrupulous family members which will fill television news and Congressional hearings through the rest of 2023 and into 2024, put all that in a broader perspective. Cable news talk shows expressing outrage may play well as theater with talk of “getting to the bottom” of corruption, but despite all that, this is politics at its worst: exploitation and opportunity. In the end not much about morality and ethics will really matter in any significant way.

A Wonderful Idea

Democrats in Congress. If the Republicans push for hearings, perhaps more than one (think of the multiple hearings that addressed Benghazi) set up two empty chairs next to those testifying and assume Ivanka is in one and Jared in the other. Ask them questions and give your own answers. If I believed anything focused on Hunter Biden involved morality or ethics, I would never suggest this—this is election season politics. If you approach this whole messy issue with questions aimed at Hunter Biden, you give theater passing as real a sense of legitimacy. The younger Biden needs a reckoning, and, at some point, his father has to address his son’s actions, but do not endorse Republican actions targeting a seedy son as a search for confronting morality and ethics and that they are seriously interested in doing something about the whole “drain the swamp” issue.

Notes

Tommy Beer, “Ivanka’s Trademark Requests Were Fast-Tracked In China After Trump Was Elected,” Forbes (April 14, 2022): https:// www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/22/ivankas-trademark-requests-were-fast-tracked-in-china-after-trump-was-elected/?sh=6bdb73711d60

James Clapper with Trey Brown, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From A Life In Intelligence (New York, Viking, 2018)

Ethan Chorin, “Just How Much Did the Benghazi Attack Affect the Outcome of the 2016 Election?” Literary Hub (September 7, 2022): https:// lithub.com/just-how-much-did-the-benghazi-attack-affect-the-outcome-of-the-2016-election/

Gail Collins and Bret Stephens, “The Biden Family Drama Is Far From Over,” New York Times (July 31, 2023): https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/opinion/joe-biden-hunter-family.html

“DOJ Must Appoint a Special Counsel to Investigate Evidence of Biden Family Corruption,” change.org (Started January 15, 2021): https://www.change.org/p/department-of-justice-doj-must-appoint-a-special-counsel-to-investigate-evidence-of-joe-biden-corruption. Notice the date this petition was started, five days before Biden took the oath of office. That tells you that morality, ethics, concerns about corruption, mattered little. There is little, if any, honeymoon period once a new President is sworn into office. There is no reason to take Judicial Watch seriously as to any concerns it has about Biden, this is simply politics as in look-here-not-there. If we take this petition seriously, then before Biden took the oath of office, “substantial evidence” had to already exist. In other words, whistleblowers and whatever “evidence” Republicans like to say they uncovered while Biden has been President is not needed, after all “substantial evidence” already existed—before Biden became President.

Virginia Keathley, “Sybil, ‘Good Ole Boy’ Coming From Plains To Plantation Party,” The Tennessean (June 26, 1977): https:// www.newspapers.com/article/13776945/tom-t-and-billy-carter-1/

David Kirkpatrick and Kate Kelly, “Before Giving Billions to Jared Kushner, Saudi Investment Fund Had Big Doubts,” New York Times (April 10, 2022): https:// www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/jared-kushner-saudi-investment-fund.html

David Kurlander, “’Call Me Whenever I Can Help’: Billy Carter, Libya, and the Struggle of Family Loyalty,” CAFÉ (October 22, 2020): https:// cafe.com/article/call-me-whenever-i-can-help-billy-carter-libya-and-the-struggle-of-family-loyalty/

Tom Norton, “Fact Check: Did Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Make $640M in White House?” Newsweek (July 15, 2022): https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-ivanka-trump-jared-kushner-make-640m-white-house-1724996

Rick Shenkman, Political Animals: How our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics (New York, Basic Books, 2016). The author’s chapters six and seven (under the broad banner, Truth), provide thoughtful perspectives on lying to ourselves and not really wanting to know the truth.

Jon Swaine, “Company part-owned by Jared Kushner got $90m from unknown offshore investors since 2017,” The Guardian (June 10, 2019): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/10/jared-kushner-real-estate-cadre-goldman-sachs

Jason Weeden, “Politics is Unbelievably Selfish,” Psychology Today (October 29, 2014): https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-hidden-agenda-the-political-mind/201410/politics-is-unbelievably-selfish