Hunter Biden is the scapegoat son of a frail but determined president whose bid for re-election is the surest defence against the return of Donald Trump. But what started out as a distraction — lurid stories of Biden Jr’s past drug and sexual escapades and accusations that he had used his father’s status as vice-president to further some convoluted business dealings in Ukraine — has moved back to centre stage in the fevered discussions of Washington on the risks and pluses of the Biden election campaign.
A federal court ruling last week has at least delayed and possibly threatened an intended plea deal in which the president’s second son would plead guilty to tax infringements and possessing a handgun illegally, in return for immunity from the wider probing of his business affairs, has come unstuck.
It has brought a political version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream to haunt Democrats, fearful that another perceived tangle of family fortunes and influence-peddling could cost Biden precious votes in what still looks like a likely showdown with Trump in November next year.
Biden’s attachment to his sons, one of whom, Beau, died young from a brain tumour, is clear. His judgment in other family matters has been notably less so. It looked snobbish and even cruel, for instance, for him not to have acknowledged that he is grandfather to the daughter Hunter had with a strip-club worker during his lost years of addiction and reckless behaviour, until he did so on Friday. Spending a few days with some of the higher echelons of the Democrat party this week, their worries circle anxiously round the prospect of Biden, the Remake.
Democrats are fearful that another perceived tangle of family fortunes could cost precious votes
He is the default candidate who is paradoxically also the surest bet to beat Trump — not least because he has done so before. They fret about infirmity — there are rumours of an unreported stroke in the past, which would explain the speech slurring and slowness. They fear a Trump campaign, galvanised by the threat of prison, prepared to tear up the rule book to attack Biden’s record and wield personal cudgels without restraint.
Most of all they are roundly dismissive of vice-president Kamala Harris who, as one critic put it, “could lose to anyone”. That hikes the liability insurance risk of Biden not making it to his mid-eighties in good enough health to serve a full second term office. And this is before we factor in more extreme, racially-tinged attacks on a black vice-president. “Vote Biden, get Harris,” will likely figure in Republican demonology.
Where does an errant, entitled, if now penitent offspring fit into the fuzzy picture of Biden’s year ahead — hugely important for the transatlantic alliance, solidity of backing for Ukraine and retention of eroded American rights, from gun control to abortion?
While he is unlikely to cause fatal damage to his father’s next White House run, an unresolved federal case against Biden Jr is, to say the least, inconvenient to the claim that Trump is uniquely prone to law-breaking, including a new indictment opened today over his attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election. It might also convince a sliver of voters that Trumpian misdemeanours have their mirror image in the dealings of entitled Democratic dynasties. And in concert with the prospect of an independent, such as the maverick Robert F Kennedy, there are enough risks of small inconveniences eating into a Biden lead to add to Democratic burdens.
It is, as many incumbents of the White House and aspirants have discovered, messy personal stories which can damage incumbent records. Biden, like Clinton when he faced the Monica Lewinsky whirlwind, has a solid record to tell on curbing inflation, a buoyant economy and a steady, if not yet winning hand in the Ukraine crisis.
And even sympathisers should see that this story reflects a less good side of Biden — a carelessness when it came to the entanglements of family, fortune with geo-politics and indulgence which became a liability.
Hunter Biden had little to offer business dealings in Ukraine as the independence crisis grew a decade ago amid opaque internal power play — other than what one of his business partners this week termed “the illusion of influence” over his father, then vice-president to Barack Obama.
That illusion, coupled with a tendency to underestimate the importance of post-Soviet eastern Europe, has come to haunt the president. It is, he might reflect, not always your sworn foes who cause most trouble. Blood relatives turn out to be pretty good at it too.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor at POLITICO
