Crisis in US leadership deepens as Joe Biden fights and falters
The crisis in American leadership deepens as Joe Biden fights and falters on the world stage. The President who came to slay Trump is exposed as unfit for office.
It’s sudden yet belated. Joe Biden has become the issue at the US presidential election, the crisis unravelling the Democratic Party like a political hurricane. The President who came to slay Donald Trump politically is exposed as unfit for office.
This is tragedy as farce. But the scale of the tragedy is immense – for America and probably the world. Trump with his lying narcissism and reckless agenda was the candidate who threatened the integrity of the office. Yet Trump’s misdemeanours have been gazumped by Biden’s stunning self-destruction.
In a fighting news conference late Thursday after the NATO summit, Biden, speaking with passion, said: “I’m in this to complete the job I started.” It was a desperate bid to salvage his political life.
“I’ve got to finish this job because there’s so much at stake,” he told the US media. While Biden stumbled occasionally and made two embarrassing gaffes highlighting his vulnerability, he spoke cogently on the economy, national security, calling Russia and China to account, and his success in leading the NATO summit meeting.
“Have you seen a more successful conference,” he said of the NATO summit. Quizzed about the presidential contest, he said the campaign had “a long way to go” and “I’m just gonna keep moving”.
Now, incredibly, Biden, not Trump, is the issue. Every day, in every media performance, Biden will be assessed for signs of cognitive decline. The situation is untenable. The Democrats cannot prosecute their case against Trump’s flawed character when their own candidate has obvious signs of cognitive impairment.
With Trump now firming to become the next president, the sense of political dislocation and alarm is deepening. The 75th NATO anniversary summit in Washington this week was not just about the alliance but about whether Biden could preside effectively. Trump, meanwhile, gets a free pass.
America is trapped in a presidential contest between two candidates, neither of whom should have their party’s nomination. The US system has failed in the quest for leadership renewal.
Trump is a vengeful populist renegade who refuses to accept the legitimacy of his defeat four years ago. Yet Biden’s defiant hubris is exposed as he risks trashing his legacy from his defeat of Trump in 2020, seemingly unable to act on his own vulnerabilities.
The crisis engulfing the Democratic Party is self-made, not Trump induced. Biden’s cognitive decline, fragility and incoherence take his re-election into the improbability zone. His opponent is age and time, denying any quick fix. The US media is filled with accounts of his staff concealing the extent of his decline.
That decline was undisguised in the opening Trump-Biden debate and partly confirmed in his subsequent interview with the ABC network’s George Stephanopoulos, a failed effort by Biden to repair the damage.
His initial excuse, that he had a one-off “bad night” at the debate was fatuous. Then he got aggressive, saying his opponents could “challenge me at the convention” as he attacked much of the Democratic Party establishment, its advisers and the pollsters.
The strategic dimension cannot be missed. This crisis is about US presidential leadership and the calculations that will be made in Beijing and Moscow. It is about the future global order.
Trump is a recognised danger to the US alliance system and the efforts to defend Ukraine against Vladimir Putin.
Now Biden’s presidential capacity is compromised. It is unlikely he can manage an election campaign; there is no prospect he could govern for another four years. Indeed, his substantial achievements in strengthening US alliances in Europe and Asia are likely to be undervalued.
How can Biden deal with Putin across the table? How can he convince Xi Jinping of American resolution if he cannot convince his own party of his coherence?
The NATO meeting and this week’s Washington-based meeting of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue drew a tight strategic nexus: the flashpoints in Ukraine and in East Asia over China and Taiwan must be seen as part of the same geostrategic challenge by autocratic powers.
The NATO meeting declared that Ukraine should have an “irreversible” path to alliance membership, a strong pointer to growing resistance to Putin’s war when the situation on the ground looks ominous. While the communique said “Ukraine’s future is in NATO”, how and when this occurs remains open.
NATO leaders attacked China as “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine” in an intensifying critique of China and more evidence of the security nexus between Europe and Asia.
Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles told NATO the Ukraine war “is shaping the Indo-Pacific”, its lessons, good and bad, “are going to be learnt in the region”. Marles announced a new $250m military package for Ukraine.
Effective deterrence against Russia and China is now the driving aim. NATO officials were stupid enough to brand this “Trump-proofing” in language likely only to provoke Trump. The NATO meeting saw the participation of four Indo-Pacific nations – Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The lines of future global rivalry and potential conflict are being drawn.
At his news conference, Biden attacked Trump over NATO, national security and the Ukraine war. He ridiculed Trump for his praise of Putin, saying: “I will not bow down to Putin.” He pointed to a dangerous world, saying China, Russia, North Korea and Iran were now working together. Warning that Putin “won’t stop at Ukraine”, Biden said Russia had already lost 350,000 troops killed or wounded and it was vital that Russia and China be resisted.
As Biden falters, the ghost of Trump hangs over every Washington gathering. Its bizarre feature is alarm at the damage a transactional Trump might do, combined with no concrete notion of what he might actually do beyond his threat to immediately end the Ukraine war. Trump sees alliances in transactional terms, not as instruments to help maintain US strategic leadership, a lurking problem for Australia in any Trump presidency.
The agony of the Democratic Party seems Shakespearean with Biden resembling a poor player “that struts and frets his hour upon the stage”. In the Australian system of parliamentary election of the leader, neither Biden nor Trump would survive as candidates. Biden would be gone by now, ruthlessly dispatched in the cause of party self-interest.
Famous for his resilience, Biden now displays a misplaced stubbornness. He is turning the election on its head – a vote that was supposed to be about Trump’s infamy is turning into a vote about Biden’s deluded sense of indispensability. Across Capitol Hill elected Democrats have sunk into conflict, confusion and alarm about a dilemma that seems devoid of any satisfactory solution.
Biden has the delegates. He and his wife, Jill, have circled the wagons. This is a family-based fortress strategy. Biden cannot be removed as the candidate; he can be removed only by his own decision. He now risks putting his own pride before the interests of his party and the county.
Biden has only one purpose: to vanquish Trump. If that cannot be achieved, he has no justification for running. Sadly, the more interviews he does, the more he risks displaying his unfitness for office. It is a self-defeating circle.
The mood is wild and feral, rumours swirling everywhere. Former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a long-time Biden loyalist, has resorted to praise in an effort to ease his exit, saying she would back Biden “whatever he decides” but warning that “time is running short” for a decision.
That’s an understatement. In The New York Times on Thursday morning, Bill Clinton’s former strategist James Carville said: “Joe Biden is going to be out of the 2024 presidential race. Whether he is ready to admit it or not. His pleas on Monday to congressional Democrats for support will not unite the party behind him.
“Mr Biden says he’s staying in the race, but it’s only a matter of time before Democrat pressure and public and private polling lead him to exit the race.
“The jig is up, and the sooner Mr Biden and the Democratic leaders accept, this, the better. We need to move forward.”
In The Wall Street Journal, former George W. Bush political adviser Karl Rove said: “Teleprompter speeches before small crowds, call-ins to friendly radio and television hosts, and a handful of awkward public appearances in the next few weeks won’t turn this around – especially since Mr Biden continues stumbling even in the most controlled settings.
“Bottom line: No presidential candidate whose party is as severely divided, dispirited and unenthusiastic as Democrats are today has ever won.”
Under the current plan Biden is to accept his party’s nomination in Chicago on August 22 so he might be able to run down the clock to this event. As each day passes the options diminish. There is no playbook in this situation; this is unknown political territory.
Even if Biden quits the race, his likely successor is Vice-President Kamala Harris, widely seen to have underperformed in the role and who would struggle to defeat Trump.
Yet trying to elevate another candidate over Harris or seeking to construct an urgent Democratic mini-primary political beauty contest would be laden with internal traps.
The Biden-Harris ticket suddenly looks to have outlived its time. The idea of a black woman as the presidential candidate will excite many Democrats who are past Biden, but Harris is a big risk. Trump, typically, has abused her in his posts. Might his abuse of the first black and female vice-president actually backfire? Might running a woman against Trump give the Democrats leverage against him with female voters?
Harris as a circuit-breaker could mobilise the votes of young people. The problem, however, is that Harris can be depicted as a Californian progressive, a negative with blue-collars workers in vital swing states. Members of Trump’s camp say they will accuse her of being party to the cover-up of Biden’s health condition. Harris is untested across many policy areas.
But her main liability is her association with Biden’s failed southern border policy, given he is running on immigration as one of his key points of attack.
In 2021 Biden appointed Harris to take charge of the illegal migrant surge on the US-Mexican border, the upshot being that many Trump supporters brand her the “invasion tsar”.
Polls show that seven in 10 voters don’t think Biden is up to the job. His appearances in the past week underlined this judgment. His mangled language is untenable for a presidential candidate. At one point last week, boasting about his appointment of Harris as vice-president, Biden said he was “the first black woman to serve with a black president”.
The ultimate irony is that Biden has begun to sound like Trump. He carries a big chip on his shoulder, the family mythology being that better-educated Democrats and progressives failed to rate him for years.
Now his resentment of elites and their media allies has been on full display. He targeted his so-called friends, the anti-Trump progressive media that protected him for so long but now, fearing defeat, wants him gone.
Appearing on a morning media show, Biden said: “I’m getting so frustrated by the elites – now I’m not talking about you guys – the elites in the party, ‘Oh, they know so much more’.”
Biden wants to fight but he displays the symptoms of an aged fighter who doesn’t know when to quit. The worst moment in the Stephanopoulos interview came when Biden was asked how he would feel if he stayed but lost to Trump. In his tortured language, Biden said: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”
Wrong answer. This isn’t about Biden doing his best. The self-declared position of the Democrats is that their solemn mission is to safeguard US democracy by vanquishing Trump. They either believe that or they don’t. Biden’s answer mocked his commitment to that mission.
Incredibly, Biden’s defenders report he is functionally fine from 10am to 4pm. That’s handy. Perhaps Putin and Xi will conveniently stage military disruptions within this preferred time zone. In the past, numerous examples exist of heads of government remaining in office while significantly impaired, Winston Churchill in his final term being a conscious instance.
That was unacceptable then. It is more unacceptable today when real-time pressures are more intense and potentially risky. America seems on the edge of an unstoppable political tragedy.
Both its major parties look weak and compromised. The surrender of the Republican Party to Trump has been a singular failure of American conservatism; the plight of Biden suggests a conspicuous failure of the Democratic Party to allow a cognitive-limited President to remain a candidate this close to the election.
The bigger question cannot be avoided: is this collective tragedy more evidence of the inadequacy of the American leadership class? How can the US, with long and deep ranks of talented individuals, end up with a Biden-Trump contest for the world’s most important political office? The compounding tragedy for the Democratic Party is implicit in the question many Americans will ask themselves: who presents as the major risk to America and the world?
In terms of policies and character the answer is Trump. But Biden’s cognitive defects have clouded, confused and compromised that answer in a way that Trump will benefit.
Current evidence is that Biden’s position is eroding but that it has not collapsed. Reflecting the electoral shift the independent Cook Political Report identified incremental movements in favour of Trump with Arizona, Georgia and Nevada going from “toss-up” to “lean Republican”.
The media build-up to Biden’s late Thursday afternoon news conference Washington time, at the conclusion of the NATO summit, was extraordinary. It was being cast as a public test of Biden’s capacity to survive.
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