The king is dead. Long live the king!
Every Australian now has an interest in Joe Biden being a successful president.
Judging by Biden’s first speech as effectively president-elect, one of the chief dangers we will face from a Biden presidency is drowning in schmaltz, slightly mangled.
Still, there are worse fates.
In the Biden presidency, Australia should care about three things: America’s standing in the world, China policy, and climate change posture.
Biden’s big speech declaring his victory was certainly as good as you could hope for from a Democrat who might turn out to be a centrist who genuflects left only when necessary.
Scott Morrison’s initial remarks were right on target, and served Australia’s national interests. Morrison congratulated Biden, thanked Donald Trump and the key members of his administration with whom Australia had such productive relationships over the past four years, cited Biden’s long connections with Australia, invited the president-elect to visit and stressed the continuity of the alliance.
Anthony Albanese’s suggestion that Morrison should ring Trump and tell him to get over himself and graciously welcome Biden into the White House is, in more than 40 years of journalism, the single silliest, most disconnected from reality, and plain cuckoo statement I have ever heard from someone claiming national leadership in Australia.
Biden in his speech encouragingly promised to govern for all Americans, including those who voted against him, he quoted a hymn, he praised the role of faith, he ended with God bless America and God protect our troops.
Likewise Kamala Harris referred to her husband as her husband, whereas woke orthodoxy prefers the word “partner” as less traditional.
These tiny markers just suggest that while Biden is always willing to take a knee to the new woke orthodoxy in the Democratic Party, he will not be picking needless fights with Christian America, with white working-class America, with reasonable conservatives and traditionalists generally.
Given how the Democrats never for a second accepted the legitimacy of Trump’s 2016 victory, it is highly hypocritical of them to now demand unity and co-operation from Republicans.
Just as it was absurd and potentially dangerous for progressive Australia in the Trump years to try to make Canberra policy take a side in the US political civil war, so it would now be absurd and self-defeating for Australian conservatives to demand our policy should be based on taking the Trump side in the American culture wars.
In our national interests, we need Biden to succeed as president. There is the potential for a Biden presidency to give us grief over climate change, as Barack Obama’s presidency did.
But this is easily overstated. Morrison has an excellent story to tell, provided he can get some airtime for the facts.
Australia remains a signatory to the Paris climate agreement. We never left. Canberra will be welcoming the Americans back. We meet our targets.
And while Biden might rejoin Paris, it’s very unlikely he will ever get the Senate to ratify it, whereas Australia has long ago ratified the Paris agreement.
There is some reassurance to be had from how long Biden has been a central part of Washington. He’s an insider in a way that Obama never was. Australian diplomats have been crawling over every nook and cranny of the Biden establishment for months. They have a very good story to tell.
The chief political danger is that some of the people around Biden, who were also around Obama, like nothing more than to embarrass middle-aged, white, conservative, Christian leaders of friendly nations as they play out some version of their endless adolescent rebellion. Australian diplomacy can surely head that off.
America’s general standing in the world will rise at the level of sentiment.
The Europeans will find Biden easier to deal with, and easier to endorse, than they found Trump. That will smooth away a lot of the recent difficulties in multilateral organisations.
Biden policy on China remains an enigma. Beijing has promised to be carbon neutral by 2060. Even if there were any basis for believing Beijing’s word, after it broke promises and militarised the South China Sea, suppressed freedom in Hong Kong etc, the very date — 2060 — demonstrates the utter meaningless of Beijing’s so-called commitments in these areas.
The real key to Biden China policy will be who he appoints to senior positions, and also whether he controls the Senate.
Controlling the Senate will depend on two run-off elections in Georgia on January 5. Biden surely secretly hopes the Democrats don’t control the Senate.
Neither Obama nor Bill Clinton could pass any significant climate legislation even when they controlled the White House and both houses of congress.
A Republican Senate gives Biden every excuse for his preferred policy response across the board — lots of talk and no action. And it would help motivate his voters in the midterm election in 2022.
A final thought. Biden and Harris both said they will combat “systemic racism” and yet they both hailed Harris’s win as the first female vice president, first African American, first South Asian American, first daughter of immigrants, etc.
So America in the last four cycles twice elected a black president and now an African American Vice President. Which developed county can match that record?
Answer: None. The US in fact is one of the least racist countries in the world. To succeed, Biden merely has to reflect what is already American greatness.
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