The Perils of a Difficult Decision

Biden Tries to Thread the Needle on Israel

Why is Mark Penn so annoying? He comes from the Sanity wing of the Democratic Party. He and Doug Schoen may have saved Bill Clinton’s presidency. His analysis of the Biden campaign’s malaise is accurate. But there is a malice beneath it, a residue of his failed campaign to launch a third, No Labels party. So he writes this:

President Biden appears behind in all the swing states, and his campaign appears all too focused on firming up his political base on the left with his new shift on Israel, a $7 trillion budget and massive tax increases and is failing to connect on the basic issues of inflation, immigration and energy. [Italics mine.]

As stipulated, the analysis is largely correct…except, perhaps, for the President’s motivation. What if Biden’s position on Israel is not a matter of cynical politics— “firming up his political base on the left”—but of real conviction? What if Biden initially hoped that Israel would respond proportionately—in concert with its Arab allies—to the Hamas atrocities, and now believes that Bibi Netanyahu’s gross overreach in Gaza is a bad thing, both strategically and morally? What if Biden is actually on course to achieve a remarkable peace in the Middle East, a formal alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia, with a guarantee of plausible Palestinian statehood and economic development? What if Biden believes that the near-impossible is the only possible solution? Isn’t it possible that the President, all too often an overly cautious politician, is attempting something bold in the world’s most difficult region? On the off chance that he does succeed, the puling, ignorant left-wing protests about Gaza would have had very little to do with the achievement—except to give Hamas aid and comfort—while the right-wing bully boy blather about supporting Israel unconditionally has only emboldened the recalcitrant Netanyahu. So why not grant the President something more than the usual, lazy default “take” of cynicism? Why is nuanced diplomacy, that most difficult of international acts, so easily dismissed as weakness?

It would be nice if more people remembered George H.W. Bush’s refusal to “rub Russia’s nose in it” after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in return for a united Germany as part of NATO. Now, there was a great deal! But it was a triumph more subtle and substantive than winning a battle, and perhaps too subtle for our fidgety democracy. Bush certainly reaped little electoral credit for it—or for his “weak” decision not to march on Baghdad and destroy Saddam. Bush the Elder certainly made mistakes—notably during the post-war maneuvering in Iraq—but his was a sophisticated foreign policy. It existed somewhere beyond the frantic world of “take” journalism, a modality where opinion is all. Biden has made mistakes, too, but he is trying to see the world for the impossibly complicated place it has become. Not just in the Middle East, but also in Ukraine with Putin; and in our torturous rivalry with Xi Jinping’s foolishly aggressive China, a relationship that needed modification—especially on the trade front—but is essentially too big to fail.

Biden’s Gaza problem is particularly vexing. It is difficult for even the most astute intelligence analysts to understand a war that is largely taking place underground, in tunnels. There are all sorts of crosswinds, domestic and international. There is recent polling evidence that the Gaza Palestinians have had it with Hamas, which has been playing them for suckers for several decades now. There are reports that Israeli’s military leadership has had it with Bibi, which makes his rickety extremist coalition even less tenable. Israeli public opinion is whipsawed between those who want the hostages home yesterday and those who want Hamas crushed, once and for all. American public opinion is whipsawed among those who think the war has gone too far, and those who blindly support Israel no matter what; and also between the campus nitwits—Lesbians for Hamas pretty much sums it up—and the right-wing pols who just want to make hay. Here is the increasingly incoherent Donald Trump on Gaza:

“I support Israel’s right to win its war on terror,” he told the crowd. “Is that OK? I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s good or bad politically. I don’t care.”

Except, didn’t Trump say a month or so ago that Israel was losing global support and should get it over with quickly? (A classic Trumpian dodge—”get it over with quickly” could mean anything from retreat to tactical nukes.) It is easy to bloviate when you have no responsibility, especially when you’re Donald Trump. Here he is on Biden:

“He’s a fool, he’s not a smart man. He never was,” Trump said.

“He was considered stupid. I talk about him differently now because now, the gloves are off. He’s a bad guy … he’s the worst president ever, of any country. The whole world is laughing at him, he’s a fool.”

I have my reservations about Biden. He seems unable to lead—to set, or capture, the national mood—which is Job One for a President. He seems unable to instill public confidence in his course of action, not just on Gaza, but on the economy and immigration and electric cars, as Penn points out. But how can you lead when the public seems addled to the point of solipsistic incoherence? According to this week’s New York Times poll, more than 70% think their own economic prospects are good and more than 70% think the national economy is bad. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that the mark of a first-rate intelligence is to hold two competing ideas in your mind and not go mad—but that can also be said of first-rate ignorance. If “the public” were a candidate, it would consider itself a fool.

It is entirely possible—indeed, likely—that we’ve reached the point where we can only be led by a great actor. Biden isn’t one. Tony Blinken isn’t either, but I’ll bet that jamming on the electric guitar in Kiev this week amped his popularity ratings. Those sorts of gestures register more profoundly than the most elegant diplomatic codicil. And so, a modest proposal: Let the Sanity Caucus not judge Biden too hastily or harshly on Gaza. Let us not assume politics when he gets tough with Netanyahu. Let us not—Mr. Penn—think he’s threatening to withhold offensive weapons from Israel just to placate the left-wing of his party (which is not very potent, if truth be told). Let’s try to appreciate the complexity of the situation, the seriousness and subtlety he’s brought to the crisis and the historic import of his goals. If he loses this election to a deranged comic sociopath, we may find—before too long—that we miss, really miss, the old fella’s boring sobriety.