Last week’s invasion of Ukraine by Russia required new drafts of US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. Over the past week, America’s perception of the world—and America’s place in it—has radically changed. No sane person would have wished for the occasion to re-establish the Biden presidency, but it is such a moment nonetheless. Biden must convey the necessary seriousness and a sense of common purpose, and begin to correct some of the political mistakes he made in his first year in the White House.
Biden’s widespread error was to take sides in a cultural civil war that divided America and blinded it to its most important national interests. Russia’s attack on Ukraine shows that the world is still a dangerous place. It proves how badly America can harm itself and others by believing otherwise. And it shows that a strong and confident America—which means an adequately united America—is a national security imperative.
Biden was nominated and chosen as a pragmatic, deal-making centrist. He was not like that. In office, he decides to marry limitless domestic-policy ambitions to a social-justice narrative that the average voter doesn’t accept—a formula for division and paralysis, and for his own crumbling support.
His reinvention did not merely put a question mark on his credibility; It also favored alternative theories, an even greater threat to his ability to lead. Maybe he forgot what he used to be. Or maybe he is captured by the hard left of the Democratic Party and finds himself trapped. Over the years, Biden has been known for gaffes and confusion. When questioned, he often retreats to the prickly defense. It also shows that he is not in command.
Linking proposals such as Build Back Better to harsh leftist radical criticism of American capitalism had another major drawback: it made the compromise a defeat. For the true believer, incremental progress is worse than none, as it risks stabilizing an unacceptable situation. The White House could celebrate successes like the bipartisan infrastructure bill and condemn those in the party who called it a sell-off. It did the first without any conviction and the second not at all, further reinforcing the divisive politics.
On the issue of high inflation, the US president has gone from saying that this was expected and that it would be temporary to blame the greed of American businesses and propose more regulation and spending as a remedy. Again, he defaulted to an anti-capitalist narrative. That would be better for the economy, and better for politics, for Biden to say is true: that from a retrospective, it is clear that the fiscal stimulus in the US rescue plan was huge, but to err on the other hand is even worse. Would; that inflation will ease as supply-side constraints ease; And that the US Federal Reserve is on the case.
On other elements of the cultural-leftist brochure, such as defaming the police, defeating Caucasian supremacy, and empowering teacher unions on parents, Biden has stammered. He has not given outright support for leftist positions, but neither has he forged an alliance with the middle electorate. His speech in Atlanta on voting rights drew staunch critics of the Democrat proposals. His spending proposals are filled with housing for unions, with teacher unions a particular favorite.
They were given an easy opportunity to distance themselves from the more toxic varieties of the rigid left-wing value system when parents in innocently blue San Francisco sacked three extremists from their school boards earlier this month. Voted by a huge margin. It was the board that kept schools closed despite parents’ wishes and spent its time planning to rename schools after problematic figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Diane Feinstein. While the progressive mayor of San Francisco took the side of the aggrieved parents, the White House slacked off.
Russia’s waging war in Europe is in a somewhat more serious category of danger than the crap of the cultural left in San Francisco. The attack on Ukraine does not give Biden another chance to re-establish his presidency; It also makes the need for that reinvention indisputable. From now on, it must do what it promised, and strive to bring the country together around widely shared goals.
Even if he fails, he and America’s Democrats retain a sizable advantage in the mid-term elections, and especially in 2024: Donald Trump. The confused average voter will then have a difficult choice: a Republican for a hateful leader, or a thrilled Democrat for an ideology. Biden could have made things a lot easier for that voter by re-evaluating his presidency and helping his party and country come to his senses.
Clive Crookes is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editorial board member covering economics, finance and politics.
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