IN DEFENSE OF JOE BIDEN: SEPARATING FACT FROM FICTION

 

These have not been the best of times for

President Joe Biden’s administration. One crisis or another pops up every few days – the Afghanistan exit, surging COVID-19 infections, immigrants clamoring at the border, the debt ceiling. Then

there  are the potential catastrophes looming over the horizon – a divisive war over abortion, threats of inflation, potential failure in Congress of the

infrastructure bills, and, above all, a voting rights disaster that could help fuel a Republican takeover of Congress in 2022.

Not unexpectedly, Biden has drawn increasing fire from the right. The heaviest attacks have come from the usual suspects in the right wing

punditry like Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, a Trump apologist who recently railed about Biden’s “unprecedented string of self-inflicted disasters.” Moderate conservatives like The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens have also unleashed torrents of criticism. Stephens wrote that he voted for Biden in 2020 in the belief he would “restore dignity and prudence” to the White House but now sees him as “headstrong but shaky, ambitious but inept.”

Meanwhile, the president’s approval rating has dropped 14% since he took office to 43%, his lowest to date (Trump averaged 41% during his four years). Though presidential approval ratings often dip during the first year, we think the piling on hasn’t been right.

 

Unfair, Off the Mark, Unjustified

Stephens began his column with a critique of

America that seemingly blamed Biden for “a diminished nation.” He observed that the country couldn’t keep a demagogue out of the White House, couldn’t win or avoid losing a war against a “technologically retrograde enemy,” can’t conquer a disease for which safe and effective vaccines exist, and can’t bring itself to trust government, the media, the scientific establishment, the police, or “any other institution meant to operate for the common good.”

While this list offers literary flair, it bears little relationship to anything Biden caused or has failed in dealing with. The fact Trump got elected president certainly wasn’t Biden’s fault. Biden hardly lost or didn’t win the Afghanistan war. His three immediate predecessors get credit for that. He got out  as he promised and

as the American people clearly wanted. No one has promoted vaccines as the answer to the pandemic more vigorously than Biden. Development of a stubborn resistance to vaccination, mostly rooted in a group of irresponsible obstructionists in the opposition party, lies at Biden’s feet? Hardly. The lack of trust in institutions began a long time ago. Stephens and others launching such criticisms should recalibrate their artillery. They’re off the mark. A great deal of what they say is unfair and unjustified by the facts.

 

Bad Optics Don’t Mean a Bad Job

Much of the criticism leveled at Biden and

his team stems from the Afghanistan exit.  Yes, it looked bad, but how likely was a neat and tidy disengagement from a 20-year military involvement the planners had at most a few weeks to pull together? It’s true American intelligence overestimated how long
the Afghanistan government would survive without U.S. military support. Even with better intelligence, however, the exit likely would have looked ugly.  The bad optics – especially people hanging off airplanes – didn’t mean the United States failed, given the circumstances presented. After all, the American military evacuated 82,300 people in 11 days.

                                       

             

                  PhotoCredit: @adityaRajKaul/Twitter

Republican critics harped on the idea Biden “left behind” some Americans and Afghanis who helped the United States. People get left behind in military evacuations. Every student of the Second World War knows the 1940 British exit from Dunkirk, hailed as a  masterful

exercise in military logistics, left many behind. Britain’s leader, Winston Churchill, became a hero partly because of that operation. Movies got made about it. The British, however, “left behind” one allied soldier for every seven they got out. That’s the nature of the beast. Exits from war get messy. Anyone who says they don’t either has an agenda or hasn’t thought through the difficulty of such enterprises.

 

What’s Been Right?

Despite bad headlines and carping columnists, Biden has gotten things right in his eight

months and change in office. Start with the COVID relief package that provided a path breaking child tax credit from which millions of Americans can reap significant benefits. That administration-backed legislation also gave relief for health care workers, help for schools in dealing with the pandemic, and even funeral-expense assistance for those who lost loved ones to COVID. 

Meantime, the administration has undertaken foreign policy initiatives aimed at restoring the American position in the world following the isolationist, go-it-alone  approach of the Trump

years. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, long seen as a Trump ally, recently called Biden “a breath of fresh air.” Johnson likely had in mind the president’s reengagement with the NATO alliance and his decision that the United States would rejoin the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accords.

A great deal of work remains for this administration. Sniping by critics like Stevens illustrates the difficulty inherent in politics now. No president has much margin for error. Any criticism can so easily take off like wildfire. So many seek something they can jump on. Biden operates in an environment poisoned by the efforts of former President Trump and his right wing allies to undermine democracy because it no longer serves their cultural and economic

interests.  We offer a simple caution. Let’s at least understand the facts concerning what mistakes, if any, this president has made and recognize what he’s done right.          

BIDEN ABROAD: RESETTING AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

In our October 28, 2019, post one of us saw “repair[ing] our alliances around the world thereby protecting our national security in a way consistent with our values and those of our allies” as a major task of any Democrat elected president in 2020. We’ve consistently emphasized the importance of demonstrating America’s global leadership after the decline caused by the Trump administration’s

dysfunctional foreign policy.  With Joe Biden just back from his first foreign trip as president, now seems a good time for looking at 46’s progress on that task of restoring American preeminence in the world.

 

The Man and His Team

Biden arrived in the White House superbly

qualified for taking on foreign policy challenges. He served as chairman or ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 12 years. Foreign policy comprised a major part of his portfolio during his eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president. He’s on a first name basis with many foreign leaders.

Biden picked an experienced foreign policy team. State Secretary Antony Blinken had key foreign

policy jobs in both the Clinton and Obama administrations and served as Democratic staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Defense

Secretary Lloyd Austin, a respected retired four star U.S. Army general, commanded troops in Iraq and led the U.S. Central Command. Jake Sullivan

served on President Obama’s staff and was Biden’s national security advisor as vice president. United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield

worked for 35 years in the State Department.  If experience matters, Biden’s team passes the test.

 

To This Point

Despite raging domestic problems like the covid pandemic, its resulting economic dislocation, and

his agenda on infrastructure, climate, and racial justice, Biden moved quickly on some important foreign policy fronts:

·    Emphasizing alliances – Trump disdained NATO, ridiculed the joint defense aspects of the Atlantic alliance, and managed to have nearly all the major European leaders laughing at him in public at international meetings. Biden has pledged his backing for NATO, most importantly reaffirming the mutual security aspect of the NATO treaty that makes an attack on one NATO member an attack

on all. European leaders like England’s Boris Johnson, Germany’s Angela Merkel, and France’s Emmanuel Macron welcomed the new American president with open arms.

·    Resetting the relationship with Russia – Biden met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both said it wasn’t unpleasant or confrontational, but Biden clearly aimed to let Putin know he won’t find the same coziness and acquiescence he found with Donald Trump.        

·    International organizations and cooperation – Biden put the U.S. back in the Paris Climate Accords, stopped the American withdrawal from the World Health Organization, and returned the

United States to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Participation in these  organizations assures the U. S. a voice on major international issues and helps prevent other nations from taking actions that affect the U.S. when we’ve had no say.

·    Getting out of Afghanistan – Americans of all political persuasions want an end to our military

presence there. We went there in 2001 in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. We spent $2 trillion. About 240,000 people lost their lives. The only real debate has been over timing of withdrawal. Trump pledged we’d get our remaining 2500 troops out by May 2021. Biden did a review of the situation and announced we’re leaving by September 11. Maybe it’s the right thing to do, maybe it’s not. It apparently will happen with the agreement of most Americans.

·   Fine tuning American policy – Biden has changed many of Trump’s policies, but not all of them. On

China, for example, Biden will  keep in place tariffs Trump imposed and continue diplomatic pressure on the Chinese over alleged atrocities committed against Uyghur Muslims.  In the Middle East, however, he’s resuming financial aid for the Palestinians that

Trump cut off. He’s reaffirmed American support for a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, a longstanding U.S. policy Trump essentially abandoned. Biden also ended American backing for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. 

·    Launching a global anti-corruption effort – The Biden administration’s first National Security Study Memorandum established fighting corruption as a core national security interest. The memorandum ordered that federal agencies prioritize efforts at confronting financial crimes. Cybercrimes and “strategic corruption” by foreign entities and governments will receive new attention.    

 

What it Means for Americans

Biden believes ordinary Americans have a stake in foreign policy beyond simple national security. “He’s always seen foreign policy as part of the overall interest process of our country,” says

former defense secretary and Republican  Senator Chuck Hagel, a long-time Biden friend.  “It’s something that is very much a part of who he is ….” International trade, the pandemic, and basic economic concerns motivate Biden. He sees a robust American role in the world as part of his effort to hold on to the working-class voters who helped him get elected. In that sense, Biden’s foreign and domestic policies are bound up with each other.

The G7 meeting and the face-to-face with Putin

represent steps in Biden’s early efforts at returning the U.S. to its premier place in the world. He’s been in office five months. Five  months will

neither undo all the damage Trump did nor accomplish Biden’s long-term objectives. He has made a promising start, and for that Americans can rest a bit easier.

TRUMP: TREASON? A CALL TO ACTION

The Responsibility of Patriots: Impeach, Vote Democrat in Mid-term, Take our country back!

We wrote recently about former State Secretary Madeleine Albright’s warning that facist rumblings around the world

threaten democracy.  We didn’t hesitate, and neither did the Secretary in her book Fascism: A Warning, to include President Donald Trump among those about whom we should have such concerns.  Things have only gotten worse since we shared the publication.  More reasons than ever exist for believing Trump existentially threatens democratic institutions in this country and the alliances the United States helped fashion that have kept the western democracies safe in the 70 plus years since the Second World War.

 

We need not detail Trump’s disgraceful performance in Helsinkiafter his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Others have said plenty.  As American patriots, the three of us view Trump’s actions there as beyond the pale.  We’ve seen enough to declare Trump a Kleptocrat, if not an outright fascist.  His behavior calls for a response from all responsible Americans.

CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

As lawyers, we know the dangers of hyperbole.  Lots of people say Trump represents a danger to democracy.  They point to his race baiting after Charlottesville, his disgraceful practice of separating infants and children from their parents at the border as part of a cruel immigration policy, his attacks on the Muslim religion, and his war on the media, Fox News exempted.  What’s different now is Trump’s willingness to bow to a foreign adversary while

disparaging and fighting with our allies – the countries that have stood with us and behind us throughout the post-war era.  No American should forget European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came to our aid after September 11, 2001.

Yet, before he went to Finland and groveled next to Putin, there was Trump picking fights with Germany, Great Britain, and other NATO members.  He even audaciously labeled the European Union our “foe.”  Trump behaves as if he’d prefer helping Putin dissolve NATO, leaving the Russian President free to annex Eastern European states and perhaps even reconstitute the old Soviet Union, no doubt a goal of this ruthless ex-KGB agent.  Even if Putin can’t accomplish that, Trump has already helped him diminish the influence of the United States.  Some European countries say they can no longer depend on American leadership.

A TIME FOR ACTION: WHAT TO DO

As we’ve pointed out before in our blogs, the three of us don’t speak with one voice on many issues.  We are different people who, from time to time, express a variety of political positions and preferences.  Yes, we’re mostly Democrats, but we’re not the same kind of Democrat, and we don’t see every issue in partisan terms.  We think of ourselves as patriots and though we each live our patriotism differently, we put country before party.

Having said that, we acknowledge seeing only a partisan solution to the danger Donald Trump’s behavior poses to the country we love.  Ironically enough, in this circumstance, we take our cues from several Republicans.

Steve Schmidt ran John McCain’s 2008 Presidential campaign.  Schmidt has been,throughout his political career

a dedicated adherent to the Republican Party and the conservative movement.  He worked for George W. Bush and helped put two conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. Schmidt now, however, advocates a vote for Democratic candidates in this fall’s mid-term elections as the only way to undo the grave damage he sees Trump doing to America.  Schmidt, at least for the moment, has withdrawn from the Republican Party and sees voting Democratic as the proper response to Trump’s behavior.  Columnist George F. Will, another prominent Republican voice of long standing influence, echoed similar sentiments, urging independents and non-Trump Republicans to vote in a way that will “substantially reduce” the size of the Republican caucus in Congress.

Schmidt and Will see the same thing we do.  Democratic control of the House would open the possibility – even the probability – of impeachment proceedings against Trump.  We wrote about the mechanisms of impeachment in June 2017, noting that process can’t start without Democrats holding the levers of power.

Even if Congress doesn’t remove Trump from office (imagining the two-thirds vote in the Senate required for conviction remains difficult), an impeachment inquiry could reign in Trump’s behavior.  Because House Republicans have stood so strongly behind him, his behavior has gone unchecked.  Democrats who oppose him in Congress sometimes seem like they’re howling in the wind.  Trump hasn’t had to respond to subpoenas, release tax returns, or answer for financial and policy excesses.  With Democrats in control of even one house of Congress, things will change.  That howling may soon resemble a pack of hungry wolves on the trail of a wounded animal.

We think it possible, in fact, Special Counsel Robert Mueller already has much of his case against Trump made.  Mueller, a smart Washington operative, knows putting out his report now, with Republicans remaining in control of the House where impeachment must begin, means that report would 

likely get relegated to the trash can.  If Mueller believes he can’t indict a sitting President, making impeachment the only remedy for Trump’s crimes, Mueller may well have decided he’ll wait and present his report to a more receptive audience.  We can’t imagine a more receptive audience than a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.  That’s our dream and Trump’s worst nightmare.  

That’s what we think. Tell us what you think.