Biden's top job is to autocrat-proof democracy after Trump. Six months in, he's failing.

As we finish the sixth month of Joe Biden's presidency, I am sorry to say it is failing.

Biden gets good marks for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He has been an effective communicator, and the vaccine rollout is going well. But it isn’t down so much to brilliant leadership as it is to the absence of incompetence. Logistics is one of the things that America does best. There are 26 varieties of orange juice in my grocery store, so successfully producing and distributing a vaccine may be grounds for relief but not amazement.

Apart from his pandemic efforts, Biden has pretended he’s a normal president facing the normal challenges that face any president. Consequently, he’s focused on a normal agenda. If Biden does manage to get a bipartisan infrastructure bill passed, it will be a great achievement. But it will also be one that's long overdue. We’ve been talking about the need for a large-scale infrastructure bill for over a decade.

But these are not normal times, and the threat facing America is unique in its 245-year history. Today, for the first time, our democracy is under threat. And if Biden has just one job as president, it is meeting that threat.

Election machinery matters most

Biden has put some effort into voting rights issues, and that is certainly important. But voting rights pale into insignificance compared with the importance of the machinery that turns election results into political results. Do you genuinely believe that Joe Biden would be president today if Republicans had controlled both the House and the Senate? Or would Donald Trump have successfully browbeaten enough Republicans into throwing out the Electoral College results so that the House could elect the president instead?

Opinions in your inbox: The best insights and analysis every morning

You had better be right, because you only get one chance to be wrong. Once a would-be autocrat successfully breaks the system and overturns an election, American democracy will be dead and there will be no going back. And do not kid yourself that someone won’t try – quite possibly Trump himself, who is giving every indication he will run again in 2024.

Whether it is Trump or someone else, however, someone will try again if only because it came far too close to working the first time. If Jan. 6 proved nothing else, it proved there are now millions of people in America – including 147 congressional Republicans – who no longer believe that American democracy is sacred and who will subvert it if they can.

I can’t put it better than U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss did Monday when he sentenced Paul Hodgkins, the first person convicted of a felony for the events of Jan 6. By invading the Capitol and carrying a Trump flag onto the floor of the U.S. Senate, the judge said, Hodgkins was “declaring his loyalty to a single individual over the nation. In that act, he captured the threat to democracy that we all witnessed that day.”

Rather than focusing on this threat, Biden is being distracted by shiny baubles. Voting rights and free college tuition are sexy and fun. Nobody is going to attend a demonstration (or donate money) because they are excited about amending the Electoral Count Act of 1887. But they should. Because you can fence voting rights and elections with all the technical and legal safeguards you like, but as things stand, the president of the United States is actually elected on the honor system by 535 members of Congress.

Power to the party: Trump might have 'found' the votes he needed to win Georgia under state's new election law

This is just one of the critical pieces of democratic and constitutional infrastructure that requires attention. For example, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., plans to reintroduce the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which strengthens some of the guardrails of democracy damaged during the Trump presidency. Among other things, it would better protect inspectors general, make it easier for Congress to enforce subpoenas, limit presidential emergency declarations and reform the Vacancies Act.

Dozens of safeguards need fixing

While this is a good start, it’s only a start. At the Guardrails of Democracy Project, we've identified a list of dozens of safeguards that failed or nearly failed during the Trump administration and that need urgent attention. But President Biden doesn’t seem interested. According to Schiff, he’s getting “some pushback from the administration” on his efforts to strengthen the rule of law and rein in future presidential excesses.

This is a mistake. Biden faces no more urgent task than autocrat-proofing our democracy. Relying on the gravitas, wisdom and restraint of the sitting president is no longer a substitute for a proper system of checks and balances, if it ever was. But so far, Biden has been unwilling to spend a single dime of political capital on fixing what Trump broke.

Mark it on your calendar: January 6, 2025 could be the date American democracy dies

Donald Trump's presidency opened a portal to another political dimension, and we can now expect other Trump-like creatures to cross into our universe. This is simply a fact of American political life that every person devoted to democracy needs to accept: Trump was the beginning of the threat our democracy faces, not the end. We are dancing on the volcano, and business as usual is no longer good enough. Subsidized child care might be a wonderful thing, but it isn’t going to save American democracy the next time a wannabe autocrat is sitting in the White House.

So please get to work, Mr. President. Jan. 6, 2025, is closer than you think.

Republican Chris Truax, an appellate lawyer in San Diego, is a legal adviser for the Guardrails of Democracy Project, CEO of CertifiedVoter.com, a legal adviser and spokesman for Republicans for the Rule of Law, and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden child care and college plans are nice but won't save democracy