The most significant thing about President Biden’s Thursday press conference following the NATO summit was that while he was doing it, his opponent in the race was meeting with one of Vladimir Putin’s errand boys at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
That errand boy, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, had spent the past week meeting with Putin in Moscow and Xi Jinping in Beijing and had wanted to complete his world tour with America’s No. 1 fan of authoritarianism and Putin’s No. 1 useful idiot.
In contrast, President Biden delivered in an hour-long press conference a strong defense of the NATO alliance that Biden’s opponent has denigrated and threatened to pull out of. Biden condemned Vladimir Putin for the monster he is, even as it is clear that his opponent and Orbán were not only eager to do the Kremlin’s bidding but they were also determined to contrast themselves with the pro-democracy, pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia leaders who made up all the other attendees at the NATO summit.
While media outlets started focusing on Biden gaffes even before the press conference—citing his introduction of Ukraine’s President Zelensky that featured the U.S. president saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin…”—the gaffes were hardly the most notable feature of Biden’s performance. And yes, there was more than one gaffe. He also referred to his own running mate as “Vice President Trump.” And he misspoke about his destinations on some trips.
But that was all superficial. It was exciting to the media because they were eager to use this press conference to move along the narrative that Biden was not up to the job and that his stumbles would lead his party to dump him and seek a different candidate. But sadly for the cable news networks and others in the press who were frothing at the bit to describe a doddering president being torn apart by the sharks of the media that just didn’t happen.
Biden did just fine. He showed an extensive knowledge of foreign policy issues. He displayed a solid memory and a good command of facts. If you were grading the event, you’d probably give him a B, taking points off for his presentation, which was pretty lackluster, and the fact that he also did not put the story of whether he should be the candidate to rest once and for all.
Within moments of the end of the press conference, one of Congress’ most respected and knowledgeable members, Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, called upon Biden to drop out of the race. Others followed.
Democrats messaged each other with frustration that Biden’s messages continued to be defensive, and his overall appearance was of a guy who might well make it through the election but who was visibly slowing and who was unlikely to remain effective throughout a second term.
One wrote me and said what she was seeing made her “sad.” Another wrote to say it was the worst of both worlds because Biden and his team were likely to come out of feeling they did OK, but that nothing that occurred suggested Biden would be able to dig himself out of the dead heat with Trump that he has been in for many months.
Substantively, there were two areas in which Biden’s performance—for all of its strengths—deserved some criticism. In the first instance, frankly, while his foreign policy answers showed his experience, he did not effectively address real weaknesses in his foreign policy.
He defended his Israel-Gaza policy and fumbled for an answer about whether he had any regrets about his handling of it although even the casual observer given the carnage in Gaza knows there is plenty to regret about administration policy there and the way they have been played by the Netanyahu government in Israel. He also hemmed and hawed his way around a question about why the U.S. would not allow Ukraine to use the weapons we provide to strike more deeply into Russia.
That said, in both cases, he demonstrated more mastery of the subjects and sound thinking than Donald Trump has ever mustered about any foreign (or domestic) policy topic in his life. In fact, as Biden sharply pointed out, Trump the other day acknowledged that he did not even know what NATO was until he became president. Sad.
But the above are the kind of policy questions we should be grappling with after a post-NATO presidential news conference. Indeed, they are kind of debates that have been going on within Biden’s inner circle of advisors too. Nothing wrong with any of that.
Of greater concern was that Biden seems to think he is the only one who can beat Trump or lead America at this moment. He even said in response to one question that while he promised to be a “bridge president” he gave up on that because the issues we faced were so big. That implied the next generation of leaders were not up to dealing with them.
That is patently wrong and indeed, I think it is dramatically wrong. Next generation leaders and ideas are precisely what we need right now and frankly, one reason the electorate is pretty turned off by this election is that we have the two most elderly candidates in history saying as Trump once did, “I alone can fix it.”
No: no one alone can fix it and generations with a greater stake in the future must play an ever bigger role in shaping the solutions they must live with. Further, Biden was defensive on what might make him step down in ways that suggested that he was not hearing the concerns of the rest of the party. It is clear he believes that if only tries harder, does more, that they will see he’s still up to it and everything will be fine.
Unfortunately, for all the questions that were posed during the press conference, the one that was not answered is whether Joe Biden is right or not about whether now is the time for a change atop the Democratic ticket. And so nothing much changed.
So on to the next big campaign drama. And then on to the contest that will pit Biden, a man who clearly understands the role America must play to keep the peace and to lead in the world, against Donald Trump, who not only does not but who is clearly working to advance the interests of our enemies.
