Washington Wednesday - Biden’s folly?

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 18th of August, 2021. You’re listening to World Radio and we’re glad to have you along today. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up: a White House in crisis.

President Biden addressed the nation on Monday as images of the chaos in Afghanistan played out on screens everywhere.

His continued stance on the U.S. military pullout was unequivocal.

BIDEN: I stand squarely behind my decision.

EICHER: Former secretary of state under President Obama, Leon Panetta, compared Biden’s troop pullout in Afghanistan to another pivotal moment in American history: President John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs. Panetta noted that Kennedy accepted responsibility for that catastrophe.

President Biden on Monday admitted a miscalculation, but entirely deflected blame.

REICHARD: To many Vietnam veterans, the troop withdrawal resembled another dubious moment in history. But Biden said there were “zero” parallels between the Afghanistan pullout and the Vietnam withdrawal nearly a half-century earlier.

BIDEN: There’s going to be no circumstance where you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.

EICHER: But that is exactly what happened and little has unfolded as the president predicted.

Biden already faced some tough questions about his administration’s handling of the pandemic and crisis at the U.S. southern border. But the disastrous events in Afghanistan have plunged this White House into a crisis of competence.

Can President Biden recover, politically? And if so, what will it take?

REICHARD: Here to answer those questions and others is Mark Caleb Smith. He’s a political science professor at Cedarville University, a Christian college in Cedarville, Ohio. Good morning, professor!

MARK CALEB SMITH, GUEST: Good morning, it's good to be with you.

REICHARD: Professor, President Biden said Monday that not only does he not regret the troop withdrawal, but the events that have unfolded made it even clearer to him that he made the right call. Politically speaking, what was your reaction to the president doubling down?

SMITH: Yeah, at some level, he didn't have much of a choice but to double down. Right now the situation is such that he really can't reverse it. He may be able to improve it just a little bit here and there at the margins, But it's done. It's happening. He also recognizes, of course, that this is still early in his term of office. He has several years, potentially, to recover—assuming he's gonna run for re-election, that is. And so there's time to make amends, potentially. But make no bones about it, it was a catastrophic set of images that came out of Kabul just over the last several days.

REICHARD: Well it certainly was. Democrats cast President Biden as a stabilizing force—an experienced executive who would make sound decisions and steady the ship. But confidence in this president has taken a great big hit here, at least with some Americans. Can Biden rebuild the trust, as you mentioned earlier, and how is he going to do it?

SMITH: Yeah, I think the most difficult part of this, politically, is that in some ways this connects President Biden to President Trump. The best thing that he had going for him, really, was that he was not President Trump. Different mentality, different approach to foreign affairs, different approach to social media, all these things are very obvious. But the way that this has unfolded, and that it was connected to the Trump administration, continues to, I think, make our relationships with allies even less stable. And I think that's going to really cause people to reevaluate Joe Biden to some extent. We elected him, at least in part, to be a stabilizing influence, as you said, particularly on the international stage. This certainly takes a hit there. People are going to look at this and say, “This is a series of mistakes that ultimately land at the president's feet.” I don't know if it's something that he can just magically rebuild trust on unless there's something else equivalent that takes place. He can continue to try to do the best that he can on domestic policy. Unless there's another crisis, though, I'm not sure he's going to get a chance to simply say, “Okay, look, now I can do this better.” These things are sort of unusual. They happen during presidencies. Not everyone gets to choose the crisis they have to confront as president. But this one? Well, I'm not sure that it's a simple process of just recovery.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about spillover issues as related to that trust question, one has to wonder if some will be less likely to believe Biden when he makes assurances about other things. For example, when he says huge spending won’t add to inflation. Do you think the mishandling in Afghanistan will affect the odds of Biden getting his domestic agenda passed?

SMITH: Yeah, I really do. I think it's a great question. All too often, I think we assume that foreign and domestic policy are disconnected somewhat from each other. A president's power is really directly proportional to how popular he is, and how trusted he is. And those things can give the president a great deal of influence, especially early in his first term of office. So we're still kind of in Joe Biden's honeymoon period to some extent, which gives him more influence over Capitol Hill, and really much more influence over moderate Democrats and potentially even a handful of Republicans, especially in the Senate. Now that this has happened, you wonder whether that kind of influence, whether that kind of room for negotiation that he's enjoyed over the past several months, whether that's going to stay. You know, will someone like Joe Manchin in West Virginia or Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona rethink their decision to maybe go along with Joe Biden in key areas because of what's taking place right now in Afghanistan? So, this is the kind of event I think that could truly weigh down a presidency, not just in international affairs, but across the board.

REICHARD: We know that midterm elections are coming up next year. Do you see some Democrats trying to distance themselves from Biden even more than you say?

SMITH: It's a great question. I mean, I think sometimes the president can have a significant effect on those midterm elections. The historical pattern is that the party that's in the White House loses a fair number of seats in the House, and even some seats in the Senate. Right now, things are so close, of course, on the Hill, that if that happens, the Democrats lose control potentially of both chambers of Congress. You know, I'm not even sure I have to say it, but that'd be catastrophic for Joe Biden's agenda over the next couple of years. Democrats, I think, probably will distance themselves a little bit from this to some extent. But those congressional elections are rarely about foreign policy. So, I think the only way this will probably really creep into the midterms directly will be if it continues. Is this going to be a long drawn out several month process. We're going to continue to see this kind of devastating footage that we've seen over the last few days. If that happens, I would say all bets are off. But if this is a relatively limited crisis, so to speak, members of Congress don't have a lot of direct influence over foreign policy anyway. I'm not sure there'll be much of a need to run away from Joe Biden necessarily.

REICHARD: How do you think Republicans might use this against Biden and Democrats overall?

SMITH: I think Joe Biden's greatest susceptibility as a presidential candidate was his record on foreign policy. You know, the old joke is that Joe Biden's been wrong about every major issue since he's been a senator. And even if you agree or disagree with that statement, they're going to use this as just another thing to give an example to Joe Biden's miscalculations on the international stage. So Joe Biden was for the Iraq war, but he was against the surge. Joe Biden wanted to spend less money on defense spending during the Cold War, whereas more spending actually seems to have ended the Cold War. This is just gonna be another thing they're going to use against him. And it's a pretty powerful argument. However, I think we have to be honest with ourselves, rarely are presidential elections decided by these kinds of foreign policy issues. Most American voters just aren't all that connected to foreign policy. I don't think that they really make a lot of voting decisions based on that alone.

REICHARD: Final question here: how do you think this will affect President Biden’s relationships with other world leaders?

SMITH: I think that's probably the most important question over the short term. We're hearing news out of Germany already, sort of rumblings that this has really been a defeat for the entire Western alliance. You know, again, as I said earlier, the best thing Joe Biden had going for him was that he's not Donald Trump. On the international stage, remember, President Trump really kind of eroded some of those alliances with our NATO allies in particular. The way that this looks, I think further erodes those alliances in a way that's just gonna be difficult to recover. And so countries like Germany and France and Great Britain and others who've been very helpful in our war on terror generally speaking, this is not going to help those relationships whatsoever. Not to mention all the instability that it creates in the Middle East itself. And so, you know, yeah, I think it's gonna cause Joe Biden to be reassessed by many foreign leaders.

REICHARD: Professor Mark Caleb Smith with Cedarville University has been our guest. Professor, thanks very much!

SMITH: Thank you.

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