Tag Archives: #Biden

Together Iran and Israel are destroying Biden’s Middle East policy

This op-ed was published by The National on October 3, 2024

U.S. policy regarding the crises in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, is hanging by a thread. Reckless actions by America’s closest partner, Israel, and primary adversary, Iran, are demolishing Washington’s goal of containing the conflict to Gaza. Tehran and Israel are both driving the region towards a multi-front conflict and war of missiles that could draw in the US. This is precisely what US President Joe Biden has been striving to avoid.

Last year, soon after October 7, the Biden administration concluded that US interests could probably withstand anything arising, strictly from the Gaza war. But they feared getting dragged into a conflict that would pose untold risks.

Therefore, Mr. Biden developed a policy of conflict containment. The virtual carte blanche Washington gave Israel regarding Gaza was intended to help him restrain Israel, particularly in Lebanon.

For many months, it appeared to be working. Despite the emergence of flashpoints in Syria and Iraq, and Red Sea piracy by the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Israel was focused on Gaza rather than Lebanon and fighting wasn’t spreading disastrously.

Ironically, the principal threat to this US imperative has come from Israel rather than Iran. In the week following the October 7 attacks, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant began pressing for a major offensive against Hezbollah. Mr. Biden pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reject these demands and focus on Hamas. A similar scenario was repeated at least twice.

But Israel sought two imperatives that were unavailable in Gaza. Both Israel and Iran assessed that Tehran had pocketed strategic benefits at the expense of Israel, Hamas and, above all, the Palestinians. That equation couldn’t be altered in Gaza, which has no meaningful importance to Tehran, and especially since Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood organization and an unreliable ally that broke with the “axis” completely over the Syrian war.

The Israeli state badly needed a “win” to recuperate national security institutions whose reputations were damaged by the breathtaking failures on October 7. Mr. Netanyahu needed an unequivocal “victory” to restore his own reputation in advance of any future investigation into those failures.

Neither goal was going to be absolutely achieved by fighting Hamas. Instead, taking the fight decisively to Hezbollah, the prototypical and most potent of Iran’s Arab militias, offered the potential for both. But until recent weeks, Israel was largely content with gradual escalation against Hezbollah that made Washington distinctly nervous but never threatened to force the regional war the US was seeking, at virtually all costs, to avoid, although there were obviously making such a disaster ever more plausible.

When Israel’s operation in Rafah marked the end of the primary war against Hamas and transformed the continued conflict in Gaza into an amorphous counter-insurgency rather than a conceptually-coherent campaign against clearly-identified targets, Israel’s attention began to shift back north.

Neither Israel nor Hezbollah expressed genuine interest in a US-proposed compromise in which the Lebanese militia would agree to withdraw its fighters and heavy equipment seven or eight km north of the border. Israel was demanding at least 20km while Hezbollah was insisting on an elusive and implausible ceasefire in Gaza.

Instead, Israel steadily increased pressure against Hezbollah and Iranian assets in Syria, while Mr Netanyahu rebuffed the intensified US efforts to achieve a four-week ceasefire in Lebanon. Israel’s extraordinary penetration of Hezbollah’s interworkings was the key to a series of devastating assassinations of much of that organisation’s key leadership while thousands of its operatives and associates were killed or debilitated by booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies.

Meanwhile, Israel’s ongoing air campaign severely damaged Hezbollah’s infrastructure and equipment, including its all-important rocket launchers. These assets are crucial to Iran, serving as the primary deterrent against any attack on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

The remarkably successful campaign culminated in the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and several of his key deputies. But it was followed by precisely what Washington had, for a year, focused on preventing: an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon.

While it is being marketed as “limited” and “targeted,” – and therefore implicitly not supposed to be the beginning of a new, open-ended Israeli occupation of parts of southern Lebanon as a “security buffer zone” – Washington understands from its own bitter experiences that such adventures are easy to launch but difficult to end or even contain.

After months of perceived passivity, Tehran finally intervened with a large-scale rocket and missile attack against civilian targets deep into Israel and the headquarters of its intelligence services. While the attack has been deemed unsuccessful by Washington, it’s unlikely that Israel will accept Mr. Biden‘s renewed calls for restraint any more than it has so many other such calls over the past few months.

The Israelis knows that the weeks before a presidential election are a time of maximum impunity from US pressure, and they are taking full and cynical advantage of this. Washington’s reticence was on full display when Mr. Biden bizarrely stated he “would not object” if Israel ended its invasion and eased its bombardment.

Israel seems unlikely to react with restraint. And the Biden administration is divided, with some senior figures privately encouraging Israel’s battering of Hezbollah and humiliation of Iran, while others increasingly fear that Mr. Netanyahu is trying to drag the US into a military confrontation with Tehran and at last secure his long-sought goal of maneuvering Washington into intervening on Israel’s behalf and bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. The US has the firepower to potentially set Iran’s nuclear weapons program back a decade or more, while Israel probably doesn’t.

But Mr. Biden has little to work with. He’s clearly unwilling to exercise the kind of US leverage that could keep Israel in check. He must now hope that Iran and Hezbollah will seek an understanding with Israel to remove militia forces from the border area, even though Israel may no longer be in any mood to compromise.

If the Israelis persist, and Iran and Hezbollah won’t employ “strategic patience” and back down, the nightmare of a multi-front regional war that could force Washington’s hand in defence of Israel – particularly in the month before a crucial election – may become a reality. This is a profound threat to US interests and goals, and would constitute the complete meltdown of Mr. Biden’s entire approach to the crises started by Hamas a year ago.

Biden’s DNC swan song was a master class in presidential humility

This op-ed was published by The National on August 21, 2024

It was bye-bye Biden on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention. US President Joe Biden, rather than being nominated for a second term on Thursday night, was bumped to the first day of the convention. Despite the thunderous chants of “Thank you, Joe” that repeatedly broke out during his address, there was an unstable air of wistfulness. It took the return of former president Barack Obama on the second day of the convention to smooth over the rough edges of what has perforce been a fairly brutal exercise in “out with the old, in with the new.”

As Democrats have discovered over the past four weeks, it’s exactly what so many of their voters and other Americans have been looking for in a political scene that had felt stagnated and trapped between two familiar figures who are both too old and, in very different ways, unpopular. But the depth of Mr. Biden’s sacrifice has yet to sink in – no matter how relieved Democrats are that he has stepped aside for his Vice President, Kamala Harris.

Mr. Biden delivered the main body of what likely would have been his nomination acceptance remarks. He was careful to strongly endorse Ms. Harris and give her credit for being his partner in the administration. But his remarks didn’t seem fully up-to-date, apart from a passing repudiation of “all this talk [from Republicans] about how I’m angry at all those people who said I should step down, it’s not true.”

There was, however, a hint of bitterness in his joke about being “too young to be in the Senate because I wasn’t 30 yet [when first elected] and too old to stay as president” [now].

But it was mainly his greatest hits, including a litany of his accomplishments as president and sharp denunciations of Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

Ever since his disastrous debate performance against Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden has made it clear that he felt, and evidently still feels, that his undoubted accomplishments against considerable odds, especially in domestic policy and legislation, earned him a second term.

There is little doubt that the President is still wrestling with his wrenching and nearly unprecedented agreement to voluntarily surrender his party’s presidential nomination and a potential second term. He implicitly framed it as a last act of national service, which it undoubtedly was. And it’s understandable that, in a mere month and while continuing as president, he has yet to fully process the depth and historical significance of his own sacrifice.

Many commentaries have recalled the example of the Roman general Cincinnatus who, according to tradition, having been granted complete power to save Rome from a potentially mortal threat, then gave it up to return to his farm. The founders of the American Republic, steeped in classical traditions of the Enlightenment, regarded this as the apex of political and civic virtue. It certainly informed the decision of George Washington to return his commission to Congress at the conclusion of the war of independence from Britain, and also his choice not to seek a third term as president (even though he would certainly have been easily elected again).

But neither Cincinnatus nor Washington are the best historical analogs to Mr. Biden’s magnificent and heroic suppression of his own ambition and ego in the party and national interest. A more apt comparison is the decision of the second president under the US Constitution, John Adams, to accept the will of the people and the outcome of an extraordinarily bitter election won by his archrival Thomas Jefferson and accede, for the first time in US history, to a peaceful transfer of power.

Washington was a unique figure in American history, whereas Adams was the first of many subsequent presidents. And it was his decision to accept the will of the voters and voluntarily accept defeat at the ballot box that set the template for two centuries of the rule of law and primacy of elections as the ultimate arbiters in US politics.

This tradition remained unbroken until Mr. Trump’s set of elaborate schemes to unlawfully overturn the result of the 2020 election that culminated in the violent insurrection against Congress on January 6, 2021. Mr. Biden did not accept an election defeat. But he did accept the evident judgment of most of his colleagues and much of the public that he was too old and in decline to plausibly stand for another presidential term.

One of the reasons that Mr. Trump has been so discombobulated by the sudden emergence of Ms. Harris as his opponent – even though this seemed likely long before it happened – may be that he simply couldn’t imagine any rational person making Mr. Biden’s sacrifice. He appears to have been certain that the President was going to soldier on no matter what in hopes of somehow eventually winning. And, indeed, his chances were never all that bad.

To Mr. Trump, the idea of putting the interests of others, let alone abstract principles and convictions, above narrow personal interests, is simply unfathomable. This perspective also informed his notorious reported remarks, which he has unconvincingly denied, describing fallen American soldiers as “suckers and losers,” and marveling: “I just don’t get it. What was in it for them?” That’s also why Mr. Trump was so taken with fantasies that Mr. Biden would burst into the convention and somehow try to reclaim his nomination that he aired them in public in both speech and writing.

It isn’t just that Mr. Trump likely cannot imagine behaving in Mr. Biden’s civic-virtuous manner. He was projecting his own grandiosity on Mr. Biden’s humility (no matter how reluctant). It wasn’t just that Mr. Trump desperately wanted to run against Mr. Biden rather than Ms. Harris, although he has made that abundantly clear. It’s more that not stepping down is exactly what Mr. Trump might have done if he somehow found himself in Mr. Biden’s shoes.

Mr. Biden’s actual convention speech was essentially underwhelming and certainly failed to take advantage of the grand historical context his extraordinary gesture of selflessness occupies. But if it’s too soon for him to seriously and publicly reflect on all of that, it’s surely understandable. He still may be coming to terms with the bitterness of the pill he has forced himself to swallow.

He probably won’t command an audience of this size again, but with five more months left in the White House, he still has ample opportunity to find a suitable forum for public reflection on his brave and unprecedented decision.

Both the Democratic Party and the American public are evidently relieved to be moving on from Mr Biden. And the country may be preparing to similarly bid farewell to Mr Trump.

But in the long run, the judgment of history is likely to echo the crowd at the DNC with a resounding “thank you, Joe.”

It’s becoming clear how much Trump misses Biden

This op-ed was published by The National on August 14,2024

Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump‘s mounting panic, at times bordering on hysteria, is hardly surprising. It is not just his sudden and complete reversal of fortunes in the election campaign. Mr. Trump isn’t merely running to get back into the White House. He is running to stay out of prison.

Less than a month ago, he was presiding like a Roman emperor over his coronation at the Republican National Convention, sitting in his sky box receiving lines of ring-kissing high-ranking supplicants. He had just barely survived an assassination attempt and appeared on a glide path to re-election against an evidently declining President Joe Biden.

Suddenly, he is instead facing the dynamic and heretofore underrated Vice President Kamala Harris who in no time has opened a significant lead in national and key swing state polls. More importantly, she has captured the cultural momentum by fostering an optimism and joy unwitnessed in US politics for decades.

Her sudden dominance and Mr. Trump’s inability to regain control over the pop cultural register he is used to effortlessly dominating is clearly profoundly disturbing. He’s facing the terrifying twin specters of losing to a black woman and going to prison.

He faces sentencing over his adult film star hush money convictions, and, if he loses the election, trials over pilfered top-secret government documents and extensive efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In the documents case, in particular, he has virtually no defence and could face a significant prison term.

He has moved quickly to begin establishing a narrative to challenge the validity and legality of a potential defeat. Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed, for example, that it was “unconstitutional” and “a coup” – and of course deeply “unfair“ to himself – for Ms. Harris to replace Mr. Biden as the Democrats’ nominee, which is all laughable. But his campaign manager, Chris LaCivita – a notorious practitioner of the political dark arts– ominously insisted that: “It’s not over on Election Day. It’s over on Inauguration Day”.

Given Mr. Trump’s myriad efforts to overturn the 2020 election, highlighting the interregnum between voting and inauguration is deeply ominous, especially since over 70 election-denying activists now occupy state-level positions of election-related authority.

Mr. Trump may be tempted to go further this time, given the much higher stakes, but his options will probably be limited to sowing chaos and doubt, and ultimately attempting to get either courts or the House of Representatives to supersede the voters.

But most of Mr. Trump’s responses to his unexpected political crisis have been visceral and instinctive. He has been mystifyingly denouncing popular Republican governors, reportedly lashing out at his aides and referring to his opponent in sexist and derogatory terms, and publicly questioning her ethnicity and intelligence. But he still lacks any effective counterattack.

Mr. Trump and Mr. LaCivita are attempting to repurpose successful tactics from earlier contests. By absurdly claiming that Ms. Harris always presented herself as Indian until she suddenly “turned Black”, Mr. Trump is reprising his effective attacks on Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” because of her questionable claims of Native American ancestry. “Here’s another phoney”, he’s implying, but with no apparent success.

Worse, his running mate, Senator JD Vance, is leading a despicable effort to replay the mudslinging or “swift boating” attacks – orchestrated by Mr. LaCivita – denouncing Senator John Kerry in his 2004 election loss to then-president George W Bush. That barrage of defamation tarnished Mr. Kerry’s record as a Vietnam war hero through unfounded accusations ranging from cowardice to dishonesty.

This tactic has been revived against Ms. Harris’s running mate, Governor Tim Walz, claiming that he showed cowardice and disloyalty by retiring after 24 years in the military because his former unit was subsequently deployed to Iraq.

The biggest danger of such political ordure is not that it will stick – it almost certainly won’t – but rather that it could make military service a liability for potential candidates. It dishonestly disincentivizes National Service, even after no less than 24 years of honorable soldiering. Mr. Vance himself served only four years, largely writing articles for the military. And Mr. Trump received a highly dubious medical deferment for alleged bone spurs that, if they existed at all, were so insignificant he can’t remember on which foot.

But mostly Mr. Trump has been pining for the good old days of a few weeks ago, and his much-missed former opponent, Mr. Biden. At a recent rally, he attacked Mr. Biden almost as much as Ms. Harris. “Why did I debate him?” he plaintively lamented, though he is now demanding three additional debates with his new opponent (an unmistakable sign of political alarm).

He’s even conjured a bizarre scenario, floated in speeches and social media, in which Mr. Biden bursts into the upcoming Democratic national convention and reclaims the nomination. This very public pipe dream has even some sympathizers wondering if the aging Mr. Trump is beginning to lose touch with reality.

Such concerns were further stoked by his promotion of an incredible conspiracy theory that Ms. Harris is using artificial intelligence to generate fake crowds around the country, based on a supposed reflection in a photograph of her parked aircraft. He has long been obsessed with crowd size, but questioning the reality of her numerous large rallies – a claim even more ridiculous than, for instance, fantasies of the moon landing having been faked – could well be more reflective of emotional deterioration than any form of political calculation.

Mr Biden unquestionably showed serious mental decline, and media scrutiny of that was entirely appropriate. Yet the US press has remained largely silent on Mr Trump‘s own strikingly decreased acuity.

Even an actual “stable genius”, as Mr Trump has famously described himself, at a crossroads between the White House and “the big house” – with only an election determining which it will be and suddenly staring at an unexpected potential defeat and hard time – might be hard-pressed to maintain psychic equilibrium.

It’s high time the country’s media, after an inexcusable eight years of self-imposed silence, finally interrogates Mr Trump’s emotional stability, grasp on reality and mental acuity. Anything less is tantamount to deceiving the public by implying there’s nothing to warrant such concerns even though the evidence suggesting that Mr. Trump may have serious “issues” has become overwhelming.

Joe Biden will be remembered as a great American president

This op-ed was published by The National on July 22, 2024

Political heroism is typically framed in terms of the acquisition and retention of power. But the US has a long tradition of celebrating, even venerating, those who have voluntarily given up power to promote the general welfare.

President Joe Biden – who announced on Sunday that, in the interests of the party and the country, he is surrendering the Democratic presidential nomination, which he has earned in the primaries and fully controls – is the latest heir to that noble tradition.

From the founding of the Republic, stepping aside and knowing when to say goodbye has been the quintessence of American political virtue.

Towards the end of the American rebellion, King George III reportedly asked a royal artist who was painting him what George Washington would do if the colonists achieved independence. The artist, a subject from the American colonies, replied that, upon victory, Washington would probably retire to a private situation. His Majesty replied: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

 

On December 23, 1783, Washington did just that. He resigned his commission to the Continental Congress and returned to his plantation (and slaves) at Mount Vernon.

He repeated this gesture in 1796, when he declined to run for president a third time, establishing the two-term, eight-year, norm that was later written into the Constitution. In 1800, his successor, John Adams, fully routinised and normalized the peaceful transfer of power by accepting his defeat at the hands of Thomas Jefferson and stepping aside.

These ethic-establishing acts drew heavily on the almost-entirely classical education of the American founders, with Roman general Cincinnatus (who, legend holds, gave up power to return to his farm) regarded as one of the greatest exemplars of political virtue.

Mr. Biden’s genuinely grand gesture of stepping back from power resonates with many aspects of the founding and central tropes of American politics and civic religion. Both Mr. Biden and the Democrats have salvaged their reputations, and even carved out a monumental set of distinctions with former US president and convicted felon Donald Trump and his cult-like Republican Party.

It will be said that Mr. Biden was hounded off the ticket by Democratic elites, but that’s false. Many party leaders told him bluntly that he probably couldn’t win and might even do damage to Democratic chances for the House and Senate. Still, they could do nothing but try to convince him to go willingly.

Not easy. The President had earned his delegates through the primaries, and he was not going to simply relinquish them because other people at that moment thought he should.

If he cared only about himself, Mr. Biden would have remained the Democratic nominee. Instead, he was rationally convinced by his friends, and possibly family, that no matter how painful stepping aside might be, it was essential to maximize the chances of beating Mr. Trump in November.

They might as well have asked him to chop off his left hand with a dull and rusty cleaver.

For a scrappy fighter like Mr. Biden, who has been counted out throughout his career only to bounce back with unexpected potency – eventually leading to a historically significant first presidential term – stepping aside is anathema. But his intermittent frailty is deteriorating too quickly and publicly to sustain electoral viability at this exceptional, historically significant political crossroads.

It’s extremely unlikely that Mr. Biden was mainly seeking to proactively defend his own legacy and reputation, although that would be a typical argument for embracing acts of courageous political virtue. It’s much more likely that he primarily responded to patriotism and arguments that the last, best and most imperative opportunity to defeat Mr. Trump and everything he represents cannot be the subject of an experiment regarding ageing during presidential campaigns.

Over the past few weeks, Mr. Biden was no doubt reassuring himself that, of course, there was no reason to think he was going to lose badly to Mr. Trump. The Democrats had many advantages. He been written off before and generally bounced back. Stepping down went against everything else he believes in, but polling and anecdotal data ultimately painted a grim enough picture that he was willing to swallow his pride, ambitions, ego, hopes and dreams in the national interest.

What a staggering contrast to Mr. Trump. Rather than accepting his decisive defeat in the superbly run and entirely clean 2020 election, he sought by numerous extra-constitutional and allegedly unlawful schemes to overturn the result. When none of that worked, he incited and unleashed an angry, violent mob on the Capitol building in an effort to stop ratification of the election results and intimidate members of Congress and, especially, the vice president.

Mr. Biden’s position starkly contrasts with Mr. Trump’s remarks to his then-chief of staff, Gen John Kelly, that fallen US soldiers were “suckers and losers”. “I don’t understand it,” he reportedly muttered, shaking his head, “what was in it for them?”

Similarly, the Democratic Party has, after a few alarming weeks, re-established itself as firmly rooted in objective reality and disinclined, ultimately, to attempt a colossal gaslighting campaign to obscure and deny the established and objectively verified flaws of their candidate.

In short, Mr. Biden did what Mr. Trump never would: put others – the party and country – above his own interests. And the Democratic Party did what the Republican Party has organized itself to passionately avoid and reject: acknowledge the flaws of their beloved presumptive nominee, prevail upon him to act with the utmost selflessness and not run for president, and just tell the truth.

Whoever the Democrats nominate, this election will be about more than traditional American democracy versus populist illiberalism. It will also be between a politics based on the real world versus last week’s Republican national convention.

Far beyond the most extreme precedent, the RNC was steeped in phoniness, humbug and an undisguised, unabashed spectacle of simulacra – including a “professional wrestler” pretending in detail to be a champion of legitimate sporting contests.

Mr. Biden overwhelmingly won the Democratic primaries. The nomination legitimately belongs to him. But he’s stepping aside because it’s the right thing to do. That is among the most noble and patriotic acts in American history.

Mr. Biden will be remembered as a truly great president and great American.

With Trump riding new momentum, Biden will need to move quickly

This op-ed was published by The National on July 16, 2024

The only good news for the Democrats is that this year’s presidential election is being held in November and not tomorrow. US President Joe Biden is stubbornly pressing forward with his candidacy despite continuing doubts about his acuity and vigour. Meanwhile, the presumptive Republican nominee, former president and convicted felon Donald Trump, has pocketed a set of shocking and largely unanticipated victories.

The US Supreme Court ruled that, contrary to all precedent, the plain language of the Constitution and stated intentions of its framers, plus simple common sense, both current and former presidents are broadly shielded from criminal prosecution, or even investigation, for any act that falls within the “outer perimeters” of their official duties. That’s not everything, but it’s awfully close.

The appalling ruling jeopardises much, though not all, of the federal case regarding Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result. But it seems more designed to free his hand in a potential second term.

No president before Mr. Trump, with the exception of Richard Nixon, required or sought extensive executive criminal immunity, because they didn’t commit egregious, self-serving crimes. This ruling seems designed to protect an exceptionally lawless president because it anticipates the return of just such a figure from their own Republican partisan camp.

If effectively freeing Mr. Trump from the rule of law in preparation for a second term wasn’t bad enough, Florida federal judge Aileen Cannon invalidated the entire case wherein he has no plausible defence for having purloined hundreds of top-secret government documents, refused to return them, and hid them from the FBI and even his own lawyers.

She ruled that special prosecutor Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed, a baffling claim already essentially rejected by many courts, including the Supreme Court. She will almost certainly be yet again roundly and derisively overturned by appellate courts, but long after the election. If Mr Trump wins, the case goes away. If not, she will probably be overruled and replaced on the grounds of palpable bias and gross incompetence.

Mr Trump even narrowly survived an appalling assassination attempt, which left him slightly bloodied but also framed one of the most potent political photographs in US history.

It depicts him bleeding for his people and cause, punching his fist into the air in defiance. Amid an array of red, white and blue, waving US flags, and security officials, he effectively signalled bravery, power and authority. It is his core appeal to his supporters concentrated with astonishing graphic precision in a single arresting image.

That photo alone won’t return him to power. But Mr. Trump isn’t just incredibly lucky to have survived the heinous attack. Instead of being badly wounded or killed, he emerged as the central figure in one of the most potentially inspiring and impressive images in recent memory.

Mr. Biden by contrast continues to struggle in the polls, in which Mr. Trump seems to have developed a small national lead that’s more pronounced in some key swing states. Many Democrats fear it’s going to be very difficult, if not impossible, for Mr. Biden to demonstrate his own vigor and valor, avoid further senior meltdowns as during last month’s debate, and eventually win.

All this has left the Democrats petrified of the next shoe to drop. Mr. Trump is getting unexpected and largely unearned great news from all directions, although being shot by a crazed assassin is surely a horrible experience.

Even the most cynical legal observers thought the two recent rulings beyond implausible. And as Mr Trump boasts about divine intervention, and seems even more messianic to the faithful now gathered at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, many Democrats see little hope and are bracing for the next brutal blow.

Mr. Trump has selected Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate. This decision could prove a mistake, as it doubles down on the Trump-inflected extremism that Mr. Vance used to denounce and ridicule but now passionately promotes.

Mr Trump might have better strengthened his hand by choosing a woman or a more traditional Republican such as Florida Senator Marco Rubio. But he can rest assured that Mr Vance, unlike former vice president Mike Pence, would have tried to use non-existent vice-presidential powers on January 6, 2021 to try to overturn the election results – because Mr Vance has repeatedly said so.

With several months to go, the Democrats still have time to reverse the momentum, especially since polling still shows a close race.

But they have little to work with. They’re more anxious about another pronounced senior moment from Mr Biden than excited by him. He must do something highly significant to change the emerging equation – or allow Vice President Kamala Harris to inherit the nomination. Theoretically, he could do this any time before the election, citing ill health. But the longer it takes, the riskier that gambit becomes.

After the shooting, both candidates called for calm and unity.

But Mr Trump, in particular, is already back on the extreme rhetorical warpath. He can benefit from surviving the attack with defiance, but risks being further associated with violence and chaos.

Mr Biden will seek to reinforce his 2020 election pitch that he is the voice of calm, regular order, non-violent and centrist politics, and the antidote to polarisation and extremism.

He can cite an extensive record of bipartisan legislative achievements, greatly overshadowing Mr Trump’s legislation, which was mainly a huge tax cut for the wealthy. But the President faces accusations that he failed to unite or calm anyone and even contributed to the polarisation that led to the shooting.

Last week, Mr Biden started emphasising an aggressively populist economic agenda. The contrast is potentially powerful: he wants to tax the rich, Mr Trump wants to tax the poor; he wants to create more jobs, Mr Trump wants more tariffs; he wants to invest more in society and human capital, Mr Trump wants to cut social services and public investments.

The Democrats planned to ensure that the election is effectively a referendum on Mr Trump’s felonious character. It still can be.

Indeed, the news cycle is all about him. But it’s almost all good news for the former president and terrible for the paralyzed, bewildered and rudderless Democrats. They urgently need something dramatic to revive their faith and hope, and change the emerging election narrative and momentum before it’s too late.

Kamala Harris should replace Biden and take on Trump

This op-ed was published by The National on July 10, 2024

The American presidency invests a tremendous amount of decision-making power in the hands of a single person. Presidential power steadily accumulated throughout the 20th century, and has recently been supercharged by a disastrous Supreme Court ruling that has created, out of whole cloth, wide-ranging immunity from prosecution for sitting and former presidents. Now the crisis gripping the Democratic Party has revealed yet another way in which, in the US system, one person can hold all the cards.

US President Joe Biden and most Democrats were quietly confident that as Americans re-engaged with former president Donald Trump, they would remember what they deeply disliked about him. When Mr Trump was convicted on all 34 felony charges in the adult film actress hush money case, Democrats became even more convinced that they had excellent chances for the White House, the House, and even the Senate.

However, after Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance, their election plan appears shattered. While few elected Democrats have openly called for Mr. Biden to step aside, panic in the party is widespread.

The liberal press is virtually unanimous that Mr. Biden should make way for someone younger. Some even frame the conundrum as when and how, but not if, he will go.

The main worry is that his evident aging-related decline – which was already concerning voters before the debate – had now effectively balanced out Mr. Trump’s character as the key distinction. Swing voters will no longer be choosing between a convicted felon, adjudicated sexual abuser and serial fraudster, versus a president who has disappointed many Americans with inflation, high interest rates and similar perceived “kitchen table” policy failures. Instead, it will be between that same convicted felon and a president many Americans now fear may not be robust enough to campaign or govern effectively.

Alarmed Democrats doubt they can make the election a referendum on the conduct and character of Mr Trump, as they intended, when it may be also and even as much a referendum on Mr Biden’s perceived ability to perform for the next four years.

The US President, however, is dismissively insisting that only “God Almighty” can stop him from running and winning. He unconvincingly insists that polls are simply wrong. The voters, he says, have shown they will stand with him and want him to keep running.

Mr Biden’s jarring confidence comes from a career of being written off, only to bounce back. That certainly happened when he came from nowhere to win the South Carolina primary in 2020 and seize control of the Democratic nomination. He’s clearly relishing the opportunity to once again defy the odds and prognosticators, and create a “comeback kid” narrative of perseverance and ultimate victory in the face of daunting adversity.

Only Mr Biden’s opinion ultimately counts. In the primaries he won virtually all of the committed delegates to the upcoming Democratic convention – or an earlier vote on August 5 which has been scheduled to officially select the candidate earlier because of an election law in Ohio – and unless he releases those delegates, they are bound to him. There is nothing anyone else can do about it.

Mr Biden insists he will stay. Even if they wanted to, other Democrats cannot push him aside, no matter how alarmed they may be. So unless something dramatic happens, Mr Biden will apparently stay the course.

Post debate, Biden’s Democrats don’t look quite so different from Trump’s Republicans

This op-ed was published by The National on July 1, 2024

My reaction to the appalling debate between US President Joe Biden and former president and convicted felon Donald Trump on Thursday was primarily anger. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says he wept. Many reported feeling panic or despair.

But on the night, and even more since, I remain profoundly angry at, and disappointed by, a Democratic Party that has proven itself far more like the Trump-era Republicans than I imagined.

The differences remain staggering. The Republicans are morphing into a virtual personality cult that is openly and aggressively hostile to democracy and the US constitutional order. It is shot through with racism, extreme personal and unheard-of institutional corruption, and both real and feigned radical Christian fundamentalism.

The Republicans still pose a range of dangers that the Democrats simply don’t. One of the worst Trump-dominated Republican characteristics is their reliance on gaslighting. They appear to have made an art form of lying, insisting that obvious facts are not true and telling Americans to believe them.

Denying verifiable reality and sowing mistrust of knowledge and perceptions is routine for Republicans both for political expediency and to protect the interests and feelings of their leader, Mr. Trump. It has been a degrading spectacle, and one in which Democrats, for all their faults, did not appear to be replicating.

The debate, however, revealed that Americans have been systematically hoodwinked by Mr Biden’s inner circle who insisted that, despite “senior moments”, Mr. Biden remained sharp and mentally agile. It’s likely that Mr. Biden does not realize the extent of his deterioration. But his most important enablers, especially his wife, Dr Jill Biden, have apparently not only failed to inform most of the party and public about his actual condition, but don’t seem to have told him the truth either.

Now the party has rallied around Mr. Biden, ensuring he will remain its candidate. But now we know why he has given so few interviews and press conferences, and has been shielded, to an unprecedented extent from unscripted public events. Mr. Biden huddled with his family on Sunday and was reportedly unanimously urged to stay the course.

Most major party leaders and donors have waved away his public mental implosion as “a bad night”. Former president Barack Obama assured the public every candidate has such stumbles. But this was manifestly not an ordinary “off day”, or the consequence of an illness or other circumstance likely to improve or not be repeated. Mr. Biden lacks the ability to roll back the hands of time.

It makes raw political sense for the Democrats to stick with him. Trying to replace him now risks a collapse into infighting by the interest and identity groups that make up the coalition, and take numerous ballots at the convention to decide a nominee. That candidate might be hobbled by resulting recriminations.

But such a candidate might inspire and electrify the party and public. Voters are clear they don’t like either candidate and are keen on a younger, new face. The Democrats have many plausible such candidates, most notably Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

But the party obviously doesn’t want to take that risk and has made no effort to convince Mr. Biden to voluntarily step aside, free his delegates and decline to endorse anyone, which is what would set up the high-risk but high-reward gamble of a highly charged and very quick open process to find an alternative.

It’s obvious why Democrats want to stick with Mr. Biden. Replacing him might constitute political malpractice if all you care about is winning. And it can be plausibly argued that defeating Mr. Trump, given his authoritarian tendencies and adjudicated corruption, is all-important. Changing candidates is probably a much bigger risk than sticking with a tried-and-true president who enjoys the advantage of incumbency and several other invaluable qualities that an alternative would lack.

Many Democrats persuasively argue that the fundamentals will eventually favor Mr. Biden, current opinion polls notwithstanding. They would indeed be toying with those fundamentals if they charge off in search of someone else, assuming there’s no repeated public meltdown.

So, political expediency, the probability of victory, the need to preserve the existing Biden coalition, and a reluctance to hurt the feelings of their own leader, even without a cultic devotion to him, all explain this wagon-circling. Yet this also means that Americans must recognize that Democrats share some of the very worst qualities critics of the Trump-era Republican Party have most deplored. By waving the debate performance away as merely “a bad night”, a typical campaign “setback”, or, most preposterously, the result of “a cold”, Democratic bigwigs are gaslighting the public.

They are urging us to pretend we didn’t see what we saw, that it doesn’t mean what we know it means, or that it somehow doesn’t matter. For the party, maybe it is and must be only about winning. But even the imperative of defeating Mr. Trump, which remains crucial, does not excuse a shoddy exercise in deception that urges people to ignore an obvious and devastating reality they witnessed in real time.

Closing an election sale is certainly vital, but sober and patriotic political marketers should also care a little about the nature of the product. Democrats are probably right to stick with Mr. Biden if all they care about is beating Mr. Trump and taking no wild gambles. But even given the risks, it might be important to field a fully cognisant and competent candidate who doesn’t regularly have “bad days”, and who will surely have increasing numbers of them in private and public.

Above all, asking voters to ignore what they saw – rather than stressing the need to defeat Mr. Trump, or insisting that Mr. Biden will be a capable chief executive surrounded by strong lieutenants – is unforgivable.

The bottom line is that the Democrats are not nearly as different from the Republicans as many of us thought and hoped. That even implies that they might be almost as bad if they had their own version of Mr. Trump, which is, thank goodness, a remote prospect.

Democrats are still dramatically preferable to Republicans. But Americans and people around the world are discovering the contrast is not nearly as stark as previously imagined.

 

 

Arab Americans angry with Biden should note Trump’s use of ‘Palestinian’ as a slur

This op-ed was published by The National on June 30, 2024

Since the Gaza conflict, critics of US President Joe Biden, particularly Arab and Muslim Americans, insist that he can no longer be viewed as a “lesser of two evils” because of his support for Israel’s savage war of vengeance. But this stinging case against Mr. Biden doesn’t actually render him indistinguishable from his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump’s words ought to remind everyone that he advocates policies and spews much more repugnant hateful rhetoric. It’s reasonable to be angry with the President, but not to refuse to see the clear difference with Mr. Trump.

In particular, Mr. Trump’s use of the word “Palestinian” as an insult, aiming to render its target unacceptable and disreputable, cannot be ignored. It is new and especially repugnant since innocent Palestinians are being killed in unprecedented numbers by Israeli occupation forces. Innocent Palestinians – although not, of course, Hamas – deserve sympathy, support and protection from a terrible onslaught. Using their identity as a schoolyard taunt displays crassness and inhumanity.

There’s been limited pushback from Arab and Muslim Americans about this outrageous and disgraceful conduct, aimed squarely at our very identity, because of an ongoing effort to convince community members that Mr. Biden is unworthy of support, and to at least stay home. But, what would the reaction have been if Mr. Biden, particularly given his Gaza policies, began using “Palestinian” as a free-floating and transferable insult in American political schoolyard bullying?

In the most embarrassingly terrible presidential debate in US history last Thursday, Mr. Trump scolded Mr. Biden that he should “let them [Israel] finish the job” in Gaza. But, he argued, Mr Biden “doesn’t want to do that” because “he’s become like a Palestinian, but they don’t like him because he’s a very bad Palestinian, a very weak one”.

It was one of dozens of moments in which the former president provided Mr. Biden an obvious opening for counterattack, virtually all of which the sitting President inexplicably failed to take. But the scandalous insult largely faded into the background amid widespread incredulity about the ineffectiveness of Mr. Biden’s bumbling and confused performance, which seemed to reinforce the most damaging characterizations of him.

Mr Trump quickly moved to dispel any doubts or arguments that he was using “Palestinian” as a bigoted political epithet, when he immediately repeated the intended insult against another of his favourite targets, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer.

The day after the debate, last Friday, Mr Trump hurled “Palestinian” as an insult against Mr Schumer, telling a rally audience: “I know Schumer. He’s become a Palestinian. He’s a Palestinian now. Congratulations … He’s Jewish. But he’s become a Palestinian because they have a couple of more votes or something.” Obviously, though, we don’t.

Mr. Trump was presumably referring to Mr. Schumer’s speech in March, in which he accurately described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “an obstacle to peace”, and urged immediate new Israeli elections to replace him.

The implications are clear: Mr Trump wants everyone to know that he’s more anti-Palestinian than any Democrat, including Mr Biden and Schumer; wants a more brutal Israeli war in Gaza; views Mr Biden’s policies as unduly constraining of Israel; and that any blunt criticism of Mr Netanyahu renders even a lifelong Jewish-American supporter of Israel a “Palestinian”.

Moreover, according to Mr Trump’s racist worldview, being a Palestinian is plainly inherently a bad thing. It’s particularly objectionable to be a “weak Palestinian”, making one a “bad Palestinian”, but his rhetoric plainly identifies “Palestinian” a particularly bad thing to both be and to be called.

Meanwhile, it’s finally become clear, after weeks of typical incoherence on the Gaza war, that Mr Trump considers Mr Biden indefensibly “weak” in support of Israel and holding it back from attacking Gaza even more intensely.

Palestinians have now joined migrants as a particularly stigmatised identity group, to be targeted by Mr Trump’s shocking hate-filled rhetoric during this phase of his second effort for a second term.

The two issues effectively dovetail in Mr Trump’s rhetorical landscape because one of his earliest positions in this campaign was a promise to bring back the “Muslim ban” prohibitions on entry into the US by nationals of more than a dozen countries, almost all Muslim-majority. This bigoted policy was a key feature of the incompetent and chaotic first months of his presidency, but it was eventually imposed after some adjustments, including the removal of Iraqis.

The bottom line is obvious. Many Arab and Muslim Americans, their friends and family, and supporters around the world are justifiably outraged by Mr. Biden’s policies towards Gaza, which for months emphasized conflict containment over conflict mitigation or resolution.

This misguided approach indirectly implicated Washington in numerous Israeli outrages and alleged war crimes, which damaged American regional interests and global reputation. That has changed over time, because of growing administration concern that Israel was going too far for US interests.

Such outrage is justifiable. The Biden administration adopted a rational but amoral policy that essentially accepted unacceptable levels of civilian death and suffering in Gaza in order to achieve the strategic goal of preventing conflict from spreading, particularly into Lebanon, thereby possibly dragging the US and Iran into a widespread regional war.

This op-ed was published by The National on June 30, 2024

Since the Gaza conflict, critics of US President Joe Biden, particularly Arab and Muslim Americans, insist that he can no longer be viewed as a “lesser of two evils” because of his support for Israel’s savage war of vengeance. But this stinging case against Mr. Biden doesn’t actually render him indistinguishable from his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump’s words ought to remind everyone that he advocates policies and spews much more repugnant hateful rhetoric. It’s reasonable to be angry with the President, but not to refuse to see the clear difference with Mr. Trump.

In particular, Mr. Trump’s use of the word “Palestinian” as an insult, aiming to render its target unacceptable and disreputable, cannot be ignored. It is new and especially repugnant since innocent Palestinians are being killed in unprecedented numbers by Israeli occupation forces. Innocent Palestinians – although not, of course, Hamas – deserve sympathy, support and protection from a terrible onslaught. Using their identity as a schoolyard taunt displays crassness and inhumanity.

There’s been limited pushback from Arab and Muslim Americans about this outrageous and disgraceful conduct, aimed squarely at our very identity, because of an ongoing effort to convince community members that Mr. Biden is unworthy of support, and to at least stay home. But, what would the reaction have been if Mr. Biden, particularly given his Gaza policies, began using “Palestinian” as a free-floating and transferable insult in American political schoolyard bullying?

In the most embarrassingly terrible presidential debate in US history last Thursday, Mr. Trump scolded Mr. Biden that he should “let them [Israel] finish the job” in Gaza. But, he argued, Mr Biden “doesn’t want to do that” because “he’s become like a Palestinian, but they don’t like him because he’s a very bad Palestinian, a very weak one”.

It was one of dozens of moments in which the former president provided Mr. Biden an obvious opening for counterattack, virtually all of which the sitting President inexplicably failed to take. But the scandalous insult largely faded into the background amid widespread incredulity about the ineffectiveness of Mr. Biden’s bumbling and confused performance, which seemed to reinforce the most damaging characterizations of him.

Mr Trump quickly moved to dispel any doubts or arguments that he was using “Palestinian” as a bigoted political epithet, when he immediately repeated the intended insult against another of his favourite targets, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer.

The day after the debate, last Friday, Mr Trump hurled “Palestinian” as an insult against Mr Schumer, telling a rally audience: “I know Schumer. He’s become a Palestinian. He’s a Palestinian now. Congratulations … He’s Jewish. But he’s become a Palestinian because they have a couple of more votes or something.” Obviously, though, we don’t.

Mr. Trump was presumably referring to Mr. Schumer’s speech in March, in which he accurately described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “an obstacle to peace”, and urged immediate new Israeli elections to replace him.

The implications are clear: Mr Trump wants everyone to know that he’s more anti-Palestinian than any Democrat, including Mr Biden and Schumer; wants a more brutal Israeli war in Gaza; views Mr Biden’s policies as unduly constraining of Israel; and that any blunt criticism of Mr Netanyahu renders even a lifelong Jewish-American supporter of Israel a “Palestinian”.

Moreover, according to Mr Trump’s racist worldview, being a Palestinian is plainly inherently a bad thing. It’s particularly objectionable to be a “weak Palestinian”, making one a “bad Palestinian”, but his rhetoric plainly identifies “Palestinian” a particularly bad thing to both be and to be called.

Meanwhile, it’s finally become clear, after weeks of typical incoherence on the Gaza war, that Mr Trump considers Mr Biden indefensibly “weak” in support of Israel and holding it back from attacking Gaza even more intensely.

Palestinians have now joined migrants as a particularly stigmatised identity group, to be targeted by Mr Trump’s shocking hate-filled rhetoric during this phase of his second effort for a second term.

The two issues effectively dovetail in Mr Trump’s rhetorical landscape because one of his earliest positions in this campaign was a promise to bring back the “Muslim ban” prohibitions on entry into the US by nationals of more than a dozen countries, almost all Muslim-majority. This bigoted policy was a key feature of the incompetent and chaotic first months of his presidency, but it was eventually imposed after some adjustments, including the removal of Iraqis.

The bottom line is obvious. Many Arab and Muslim Americans, their friends and family, and supporters around the world are justifiably outraged by Mr. Biden’s policies towards Gaza, which for months emphasized conflict containment over conflict mitigation or resolution.

This misguided approach indirectly implicated Washington in numerous Israeli outrages and alleged war crimes, which damaged American regional interests and global reputation. That has changed over time, because of growing administration concern that Israel was going too far for US interests.

Such outrage is justifiable. The Biden administration adopted a rational but amoral policy that essentially accepted unacceptable levels of civilian death and suffering in Gaza in order to achieve the strategic goal of preventing conflict from spreading, particularly into Lebanon, thereby possibly dragging the US and Iran into a widespread regional war.

But Mr. Trump has made it clear that he would go further in supporting Israeli attacks in Gaza; he has demonstrated that he views the very term “Palestinian” as a potent slur to smear adversaries; and that he still intends to prevent as many nationals of Muslim-majority countries as possible from entering the US.

Mr. Biden’s Gaza policy was misguided and remains certainly objectionable. His wretched performance at the “debate” raises significant doubts about his acuity. But Arab and Muslim Americans can only help Mr. Trump by voting for him or a third-party candidate, or just staying home in November, because of the mistaken conclusion that Mr. Biden is not preferable in any meaningful way.

Given their obvious, well-founded and near-consensus perspectives, Arab and Muslim Americans, in fact, have no rational choice but to do their best to prevent a second term for a man who thinks calling someone “Palestinian” is one of the worst insults he can muster these days.

Biden must drop out of the race before it’s too late

This op-ed was published by The National on June 28, 2024

It was an unprecedented fiasco. US president Joe Biden‘s re-election candidacy crashed and burned spectacularly at the debate against former president and convicted felon Donald Trump. On policy, Mr. Biden had the better of the conversation, such as it was, but on style he failed miserably. He came across as bumbling and often confused.

I warned on these pages that style would outweigh substance. Mr. Trump had a far better night on style, seeming confident and controlled. He avoided outrageous outbursts. He contained himself emotionally, which was his main task. Mr. Biden, by contrast, had a meltdown on his primary assignment, which was to reassure Americans that he is capable, focused, engaged, mentally acute and ready to continue in this highly challenging job.

On substance, Mr. Trump was dreadful. He mainly relied on outrageous falsehoods, claiming credit for accomplishments, like job growth and deficit reduction, that were in fact secured by Mr. Biden.

He occasionally displayed bouts of excessive nastiness, but between the disgracefully disengaged moderators and Mr. Biden’s misguided effort to remain “presidential”, he faced remarkably few provocations.

Mystifyingly, Mr Biden barely mentioned Mr Trump’s criminal record, and no one seriously interrogated his status as an adjudicated sexual abuser and serial fraudster. He also astonishingly failed to mention strengthening NATO by adding Finland and Sweden despite Hungarian and Turkish recalcitrance.

Mr Biden had some strong moments, observing that Mr Trump has the “morals of an alley cat,” and is a “whiner” who can’t accept a legitimate defeat. Mr Trump’s performance had extremely serious flaws, including his predictable refusal to commit to respecting the election outcome and dodging questions on issues such as childcare and climate change.

The “debate” degenerated into farce during a preposterous argument about golf. But Mr Trump came closer to laying out a vision for a second term. The president’s misguided insistence on rising above Mr Trump’s sordid criminality and adjudicated abuses should at least have facilitated a laser-like focus on how he proposes to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. He wretchedly failed to do either effectively.

Mr. Biden displayed surprising and impressive vigor during March’s State of the Union address when he was robust, forceful and at his best as he sparred extemporaneously with Republican hecklers. Last night, he seemed a different person altogether.

Democrats have been insisting that behind closed doors he seems fine. Obviously, those who reported that he has “good days and bad days”, typically said of someone who’s fundamentally unwell, were telling the truth. That fact is now on full display because of the contrast between the two performances. And it’s likely catastrophic for his chances.

The administration insiders who have been insisting Mr. Biden is sharp and focused have much to answer for. What, after all, are the chances that the bumbling and confused president of the debate never exhibited those characteristics before?

I greatly admire Mr. Biden. In my assessment, he has headed the most successful presidency in my adult lifetime, despite some obvious blunders — worst of all his failure to clearly explain his administration’s wise preference for job salvation and growth over low inflation. And he adopted a badly misguided policy towards the Israeli rampage in Gaza, which for many months emphasized conflict containment. It was more an amoral rather than an immoral policy, but it has damaged American interests by implicating the country in obviously indefensible levels of killing and mayhem inflicted on Palestinian civilians.

Arab and Muslim Americans should note, though, that Mr. Trump called Mr. Biden “a bad Palestinian” as an attempted insult. It was clear he didn’t mean the US president should be a better Palestinian, but rather that being Palestinian is simply a terrible thing. But Mr. Trump’s deep-seated racism is not news, and for part of his base it’s actually a selling point.

Yet, taken as a whole and on a relative basis, I assess Mr. Biden’s presidency as remarkably effective and positive. Therefore, it is extremely painful for me to confront the fact that he’s apparently no longer a plausible candidate for the job – except in contrast to his felonious and profoundly narcissistic opponent.

It’s simply unreasonable to ask the American people to choose someone who is no longer up to the task simply to avoid giving the presidency back to a thoroughly bad person.

Those of us who fear the consequences of a second Trump term must accept now that Mr. Biden should immediately retire and give his party a chance to either elevate the vice president as their standard-bearer or, more wisely, find a way to tap into the deep and talented Democratic Party bench around the country. Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan is an obvious and appealing option, but there are many other plausible alternatives.

Some pundits are insisting it’s impossible for Democrats to change their ticket at this stage. But it obviously isn’t; a candidate can suddenly retire for health-related reasons. If a presumptive candidate were to suddenly pass away, there are mechanisms for addressing that. Given that his candidacy is probably now so implausible, it amounts to the same thing politically.

Democrats are panicking, shocked to discover their leader is too old, if not in years then in focus and acuity. The US president’s main role is that of a chief executive who primarily must appoint the right people. In general, Mr. Biden has done that and could continue to. But too much individual power and decision-making is vested in the office to confidently give it to someone who suffers from so much evident, even if intermittent, mental fog.

Democrats can and should find a new candidate. It is by no means too late. But it’s up to Mr. Biden. If he truly loves his country and believes it’s imperative to stop Mr. Trump’s re-election in order to protect the US democratic and constitutional order – a very reasonable evaluation – he must face the music and step aside, not as President but as the Democratic candidate, without much delay.

If the Democrats stick with Mr. Biden, he could certainly still win, just as Mr Trump survived the disgusting 2016 Access Hollywood video, in which he boasted about grabbing women by their genitalia. But such a gamble would be unconscionable, given that Mr. Trump genuinely poses a significant threat to the US constitutional order.

Mr. Biden must get out of this race as soon as possible.

This week’s Biden-Trump presidential debate could be the most significant in US history

This op-ed was published by The National on June 25, 2024

The American commentariat is virtually unanimous that Thursday night’s first presidential election debate between US President Joe Biden and former president and convicted felon Donald Trump is potentially the most significant since the very first one held in 1960 between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

While these candidates are extremely well known to the public, both require a breakthrough moment in what has been a remarkably steady and even campaign. But if neither achieves a noteworthy success, or falls into one of the pitfalls yawning before them, it’s also possible that nothing will happen to significantly shift this race.

There are several unique characteristics to this week’s debate.

It will be the first between a sitting president and a former incumbent. It’s the first in decades to be handled purely by a single news organization, CNN, rather than an independent national commission (which Trump has refused to work with). And it involves by far the oldest presumptive presidential candidates (both will be formally anointed at their party conventions next month) who are well over 75 (Mr. Biden is 81 and Trump is 78). It’s also the earliest debate in any presidential election campaign, because Mr. Biden is an essentially unchallenged incumbent and Trump was able to secure his party leadership with no effective opposition.

The campaign is now in full swing, even though the conventions lie ahead, and in the run-up, Trump held a narrow lead nationally and in crucial swing states. However, as the campaign has gained pace and, especially, after Trump’s conviction on all 34 felony counts in the Manhattan adult film star hush money trial, Mr. Biden has gained noticeable ground, and is now leading very narrowly in the most recent polls.

But the campaign remains balanced on a knife edge. Neither candidate has clearly developed a winning coalition or decisive edge over the other, and both will be looking for a breakthrough moment of some sort.

Trump, in particular, needs that. Despite his continued popularity among Republicans and gains among non-college educated African-American and Latino males, the momentum, such as it is, appears to be with the President, who also enjoys the distinct advantage of incumbency. But Trump, too, is running as a kind of incumbent, and the outcome probably boils down to which of the two unpopular and uninspiring men proves to be the dominant focus of attention.

A de facto referendum on either candidate probably secures victory for the other.

It’s no mystery that both candidates need to overcome negative assumptions about themselves. American voters are rarely moved by policy arguments, but rather respond to atmospherics, general impressions, likability and respectability. On both counts, each man must, above all, avoid pitfalls.

Republicans have painted the President, who is undoubtedly showing his age, as senile and incompetent. If Mr. Biden can repeat his performance at the State of the Union address in January, in which he looked engaged, fully competent and even sprightly, especially during rhetorical sparring with Republicans, he will probably have had a good night. It’s imperative that he does not come across as confused or bewildered, although voters may be patient with some rhetorical stumbling.

Trump, by contrast, will have to control himself. He is more given to extreme rhetorical outbursts and excesses of outrage than he already was in the past, and if he comes across as overly aggressive, boorish and obnoxious – as he did in his debates with Mr. Biden four years ago – he could sustain considerable damage.

If, on the other hand, he is able to remain calm and controlled – and especially refuses to rise to the bait that Mr. Biden certainly should be judiciously throwing at him or bristle at uncomfortable questions from the moderators – he could reassure voters that he’s not as unhinged as he often appears these days. He must also avoid the strange rambling that he appears to be increasingly given to at both public and, as widely reported, private appearances.

The President will need to goad his opponent without unduly mocking or appearing to cynically provoke him. The former president must absorb these taunts, and incontrovertible facts such as his status as a convicted criminal, without appearing to lose control of his emotions or respond with transparently crude and preposterous lies.

Trump continues to run as an outsider, even though he’s commanded a major party for almost a decade and served as president for four years. That presents him with the opportunity to continue to challenge the system, but if he appears ready to run roughshod over it or dismiss the Constitution when convenient, he will confirm many of the worst fears about his political evolution. Mr. Biden, by contrast, will have to defend the constitutional system without seeming to apologize for structures that unduly advantage the few over the many.

The debate provides a golden opportunity for the President to keep harping on a few key facts that can refute widespread misapprehensions that the economy under his leadership is in a recession (in fact, by most measures, it is exceptionally robust), or that crime is at unknown and rising highs (in the main, it isn’t).

Trump has the opportunity to reinforce the nostalgia many voters appear to feel about his presidency and avoid being stung by reminders of the failures, particularly during the worst year of the Covid-19 pandemic, that contributed heavily to his defeat four years ago. And he’s certainly going to have to resist relitigating the 2020 election or harping on conspiracy theories that few swing voters believe and fewer still consider relevant to the next four years.

But most of all, both men must avoid significantly reinforcing the stereotypes that haunt them: that Mr. Biden is a virtually senile servant of an unjust status quo, and that Trump is a mentally unstable would-be authoritarian.

Atmospherics and general impressions will be key. If either man strongly reinforces these impressions, it could be disastrous. But if both avoid the pitfalls, little may change. Nonetheless, this has all the makings of one of the most consequential presidential debates in US history.

Anyone interested in US politics must watch it carefully. But remember: style will prevail over substance, and general impressions or breakthrough moments will, as always, carry the day.