The Two Faces of Joe Biden – Effective in International Politics, Self-Effacing in America.
The situation is becoming more and more worrisome for Biden as the Midterms take place in November.
At the end of June 2022, in Europe, Joe Biden wore a slim-fitting, royal blue suit, with the confident, if somewhat frail, the appearance of a man sure of his leadership. And he naturally played the role of paterfamilias for a Western camp gathered in the Bavarian Alps, then in Madrid, for a G7 meeting followed by a NATO summit. He guaranteed the unity and determination of the family in the face of Vladimir Putin's dirty war in Ukraine.
But no sooner had he returned home to Washington than he took another nasty hit from the Supreme Court and returned to his inside suit - that of a loser.
A calm and efficient Joe Biden on the international scene, leading a transatlantic coalition invigorated by Russian warmongering; but a Joe Biden unable at home to stem the rise of a Christian ultra-right with pronounced theocratic tendencies. The Democratic president is drifting through a tormented domestic situation, a few weeks before the mid-term elections, which look rather bad for his party. A poll in the form of a sad omen: 71% of Americans do not want him to run again in November 2024 - 61%, it is true, reject the possible candidacy of Republican Donald Trump.
The question posed, which is not new, is that of the inside-outside dialectic: what is the impact of Biden's domestic weakness on his foreign policy?
The timing is important. The president must maintain the support of Congress as the war in Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, enters a second phase and will weigh, come winter, on the daily lives of Americans: exploding prices of hydrocarbons and everyday groceries at the supermarket.
In opulent Bavaria, Biden, in front of the participants of the summit of the seven oldest developed economies, spoke little but firmly. Russian aggression in Ukraine must be contained, even if it takes time. In the wake of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the G7 is committed to a “Marshall Plan” to rebuild Ukraine once peace is achieved - a matter of generations. Kyiv is talking about a sum of 750 billion dollars!
Joe Biden is as effective on the world stage as he is ineffective and hampered in America
Two days later, in Madrid, the 28 members of the Atlantic Alliance rediscovered one ambition: to block Russian revanchism. They welcomed two new members, Finland and Sweden, two former neutral countries converted to NATO, so much so that Putin, with his barbaric brutality, inspires fear on the shores of the Baltic. The Allies were recording the return of the United States to Europe: 120,000 men today, compared to less than 30,000 until recently. They announced the reinforcement of their forces in Poland, the Baltic States, Spain, and Italy. They denounced Xi Jinping's bias in favor of Putin's war.
Joe Biden returned to Washington with a Western camp determined to counter, as much as possible, Moscow's war of choice and territorial conquest. A solid performance. Unfortunately, as soon as Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base, near the federal capital, the President found himself back in the domestic arena, where the Democrats are registering defeat after defeat in what is dear to them.
A Supreme Court tailored by the Republican Party welcomed Biden back by limiting his administration's ability to regulate toxic emissions from power plants. The Court had just removed the federal protection for abortion that had existed for half a century. Earlier, the Court had endorsed Republican states' schemes to make it harder for minorities to vote.
Finally, it confirmed, in its supposed constitutional compliance, the free access of every American to weapons of war. And, as if to celebrate the Republicans' passion for repeating rifles, a “crazy” gunman opened fire on July 4, 2022, on one of the parades celebrating this national holiday in the United States: 6 dead and 26 wounded by bullets...
The absence of legislation too often leaves the Supreme Court free to say what the law is. Biden does not have the parliamentary majority for his social ambitions - so there is no way to translate them into law. No less serious in the run-up to the November elections is the fact that the president is being challenged by a Democratic left that, in its political and cultural delirium, is feeding the Republican discourse in favor of a return to the America of 1950. He is weakened by inflation, of the order of 8 to 9%, to which his budgetary policy has contributed, but which is also maintained by the sanctions against Russia.
Under these conditions, Joe Biden must maintain American support for assistance to Kyiv, which already amounts to more than 40 billion dollars. For the moment, the New York Times believes that the President's Ukrainian policy enjoys broad support in Congress, among Democrats and Republicans. The latter do not have, in foreign policy, the pro-Putin tropism of their leader, former President Donald Trump. But nothing is definitively certain. We must wait until winter: the possibility of a barrel of oil at 200 dollars could weigh heavily on the elected officials.
As a backdrop to the televised psychodrama, the House committee hearings on Donald Trump's role in the assault on Congress on January 6, 2021, add to the sense of a more fragile democracy than previously imagined. If there was any felony on the part of the former president, he must be punished. The credibility of American democracy is at stake. And it is one of the elements of their leadership over the Western family.
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Most Americans who do not live in a closet view Obiden as a hopeless demented old fool who among other transgressions is shoveling taxpayer funds to the former homoerotic dancer who stars in the daily Kviv Comedy Show while his befuddled countrymen are being slaughtered in a war they cannot possibly win. Yes, in another 100 days a political earthquake will shake the world as this CCP agent is impeached and removed from office and replaced by Donald Trump, who will make it a priority to stop the war and partition Ukraine between Poland and Russia in exchange for security guarantees that will insure peace, prosperity, and stability to Europe for at least a generation. At the same time, recognizing the USD is no longer a viable reserve currency and that our debt is unsustainable there is the possibility a new Trump Administration will raise BTC to the status of legal tender for the purpose of paying federal taxes.