Biden’s political problems are acute
Not only is President Joe Biden tied, or even behind, Donald Trump in some recent public opinion polling, but he has two severe foreign policy crises at a time when his public focus should be on framing his domestic agenda as well his prospective election opponent as a mortal enemy to American democracy (in contrast to himself as its guardian).
In the coming weeks and months the president will be forced to spend even more of his political capital on the Israeli war against Hamas and on the war in Ukraine, where, without U.S. assistance, the Ukrainians face the dire prospect of Russian conquest.
All of this comes at an inopportune moment: the new year 2024 and the arrival of another presidential election.
Biden’s Gaza problem stems largely, though not exclusively, from the left-wing of his own party and from young voters who view the Israelis as occupiers of Arab lands, as colonialists, as oppressors.
Add to this the revulsion experienced by others at the sight of babies bloodied and killed by daily Israeli air strikes and by the mounting death toll among civilians in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, as the Israeli military tries to root out and destroy Hamas.
Reacting to the Hamas onslaught on Israel of Oct. 7, which took 1,200 Israeli lives and was characterized by multiple rapes and hundreds of kidnappings, Biden embraced the right of Israeli self-defense – a position he’s stuck with in public while privately cautioning the Jewish state against the very military tactics which have caused widespread civilian displacements and deaths.
(It needs to be pointed out that on the day he voiced support for Israeli retaliatory measures, the president also warned Israel against reacting in roughly the same manner the U.S. overreacted to the attacks of 9/11. Think before you strike, do not make things worse by acting on your outrage, he told the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.)
White House spokeswoman Olivia Dalton told reporters on Air Force One the other day, “Israel has heard from us loud and clear [about] our expectations that they uphold international humanitarian law, abide by the rules of war and take steps to minimize, to every extent possible, civilian casualties.”
Indeed, the Biden administration rightly takes credit for the recent four-day military stand down during which Israeli kidnap victims were swapped for Palestinian prisoners, and relief supplies were rushed to beleaguered Gaza-Palestinian civilians.
It has also been reported that the administration argued that Israel should confine the war to Gaza (and not attack Hezbollah forces in Lebanon). In addition, the Israeli military has taken somewhat to heart the U.S. admonition to try to further safeguard innocent Palestinian lives – by the publication of war-zone maps, for instance.
Presidential envoys, including Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, have delivered these messages privately to Jerusalem and spoken out in public.
Nevertheless, politically speaking, President Biden appears as fully wedded as ever to the actions of the Israeli military. As he himself recently noted, “I’ve been a strong, strong supporter of Israel from the time I entered the Senate in 1973.”
At a minimum, here is the worrisome part of all this for the president: because the war is far from over, it will continue to monopolize the public stage for months to come.
The same is true for Ukraine. Last week’s rejection by the Senate of a Ukraine-Israeli military aid package virtually guarantees it. (The largely party line vote was a filibuster-proof 49-51, pointing out, once again, the absurd persistence of minority rule in the U.S. Senate.)
Estimates vary as to how long the administration will be able to stretch out the dollars available for Ukraine. The White House said last week the deadline is nearing; Pentagon sources indicated new infusions of U.S. cash will not be necessary until January. The way things move in Washington, it may take at least that long to untangle the mess in the Senate. Then there’s the House, where the Republican majority appears to have turned its back on Kyiv.
Bottom line, President Biden doesn’t control the conduct of either war but is expected to channel both in directions that serve the U.S. national interest and the long-term peace of the world.
True enough, good presidents must be good jugglers, and presidents are elected to do the seemingly impossible, but the task ahead seems especially daunting, time consuming and politically perilous for a president running for re-election at a time of maximum danger to democracy itself.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.