The lesson from Biden-Trump comparisons on Ukraine
Would Donald Trump have handled the Ukraine crisis better than Joe Biden? “He would have never done during the Trump administration what he is doing now,” said the former president in a radio interview yesterday.
Writing for the site today, Freddy Gray thinks there is something to Trump’s claim: “Putin, as a slightly comic alpha male authoritarian, saw in Trump something he recognized — an unstable, unpredictable yet potentially decisive actor on the world stage. Rightly or wrongly, he saw in Trump strength whereas in the Democratic leadership he sees only weakness and folly.”
National Review editor Rich Lowry also offered a variant of Richard Nixon’s madman theory, applied to Trump. “The sheer unpredictably of Trump, his anger at being defied or disrespected [and] his willingness to take the occasional big risk,” all made him a more frightening foe for Putin than Biden, he tweeted.
It’s not just the right that is interested in the Trump-Biden comparisons on Ukraine. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson chose the moment of the Biden-led West’s failure to contain Putin to write a column with a headline almost beyond parody: “With Biden standing firm, Putin must wonder: where’s Trump when I need him?”
Robinson contrasts Trump’s “neo-isolationism” with Biden’s tough promise of sanctions. Nowhere does he mention that the Trump administration approved weapons shipments to Ukraine that the Obama administration had opposed. Or that only a year ago, Biden was busy resetting the relationship with Russia, lifting sanctions on Nord Stream 2 and suspending arms sales to Kyiv.
Who would have handled the crisis better is ultimately a moot point, but the left- and right-wing versions of the “What Would Trump Have Done?” parlor game nonetheless reveal a double-standard in the way the actions of the current president and his predecessor are judged on the world stage.
I’ve been struck by how little agency is awarded to Biden and his colleagues in coverage of the current crisis. According to the tone in much of the press, the president is trying his best, and if that proves to not be enough, then so be it. Read, for example, this toadying New York Times account of “Biden’s race to prevent war.” At the end of the uncritical tale of the steps the Biden administration has taken to counter Putin, readers are told: “And now that it appears that the Russian president is ignoring those threats, Mr. Biden risks being accused by Republicans and other critics of having failed to do enough to prevent an invasion in the first place.” Those pesky Republicans!
Coverage of Trump on the world stage, by contrast, often assumed that global events were primarily a product of an ill-advised tweet or off-the-cuff remark from the leader of the free world. The best approach, of course, sits somewhere between these two extremes: presidents are neither omnipotent nor powerless.
But in the debates over whether Trump or Biden would have handled the Ukraine crisis better, the burden of proof is surely on the current president’s defenders. Then-Vice President Biden was tasked with the Ukraine issue when Putin invaded Crimea in 2014. He campaigned on taking a tough line with Russia. Now Putin is poised to invade on his watch. In that context, comparisons with his predecessor are not as flattering as his supporters might think.
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West Wing life imitates art
With her ginger bob and fondness for sassy clap-backs, White House press secretary Jen Psaki has sometimes been compared to The West Wing’s fictional comms chief C.J. Cregg. It seems the similarities are no coincidence. During a recent appearance on actor Rob Lowe’s podcast, Psaki said that bingeing the Aaron Sorkin hit show persuaded her to return to the political fray. “In a crazy way, [the show] really brought me back to come back to politics and I ended up coming back and doing the 2012 campaign, and traveling with then-President Obama on his reelection,” she said.
Is Reynolds ready for primetime?
Iowa governor Kim Reynolds will deliver the GOP rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech next week. “Republican governors across America are leading the charge in defending liberty and securing unmatched economic prosperity in our states,” Reynolds said. “The American people have had enough, but there is an alternative and that’s what I look forward to sharing on Tuesday evening.”
What you should be reading today
The editors: Biden fails to fill his office
Lewis M. Andrews: Why a post-Covid world might not be so bad
Taylor Millard: Democracy and economic freedom are in decline
Joel Kotkin, Tablet: The flight of Big Tech
Chris Pope, City Journal: America’s redistributive welfare state
Robert Kagan, Washington Post: What we can expect after Putin’s conquest of Ukraine
Poll watch
President Biden Job Approval
Approve: 41.4 percent
Disapprove: 52.9 percent
Net approval: -11.5 (RCP Average)
Biden Job Approval on the Russia Crisis
Approve: 36 percent
Disapprove: 55 percent (Gallup)
