Back in the darkest days of Richard Nixon, Republican operatives used to chill the blood of New York Times readers by speaking ominously of “maximizing the incumbency.” The basic idea was that an authoritarian incumbent, if he were willing to ignore both constitutional restraint and long-standing precedent, might mobilize the enormous resources of the federal government for his own partisan advantage.

Nixon looked the part. With his hunched shoulders, furtive eyes, and more or less permanent five-o’clock shadow, he was a cartoonist’s dream. And yes, his people peeked at a few tax returns, rummaged through Daniel Ellsberg’s files, and permitted, if not commissioned, a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. But Nixon had a decent respect for the opinion of those New York Times readers and, in my personal observation, was too patriotic to go full, manly man authoritarian.

Not Joe Biden. He may look the part of the daffy uncle when he greets imaginary friends, wanders from the podium for parts unknown, or answers a question not even distantly related to the one just asked, but he is focused like a death ray on his own election. He has mobilized the enormous resources of the federal government in support of his reelection campaign.

You know the major themes.

It is by now beyond dispute that Biden’s border policies are designed to effect change that not even Barack Obama would have attempted. To open the door to millions of illegals, most of them young men of military age, many of them from countries openly hostile to America, is transformational.

And to use America’s precious megaphone, the bully pulpit, to alter or reverse our basic values is equally transformational. Law-enforcement officials who are operationally pro-criminal; educators fixated on social change at the expense of student achievement; affirmative-action hires in the military; the fairness lobby insisting that women athletes compete against loser men; campus leaders embracing antisemitism; political consultants making campaign centerpieces of abortion availabilities; undercutting allies doing the fighting and dying for the alliance — none of these enemies of the settled culture is called out by the president. All of them are excused, most of them applauded, many of them subsidized.

Those stories have been covered by at least the sectarian media. The more innovative part of Biden’s incumbency-maximizing strategy — his fiscal and monetary policy — has gone underreported.

Joe Biden is trying to buy his reelection with tax dollars, half of them extracted from voters who oppose him. In this one instance, he might feel that taxpayers are paying their fair share.