Joe Biden is “rattled,” according to NBC News, and “looking to regain voters’ confidence that he can provide the sure-handed leadership he promised during the campaign.” How? By attempting to control the media narrative. On May 30, Biden released an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that discussed “My Plan for Fighting Inflation.” The next day, Biden composed a “guest essay” for the New York Times on “What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine.”
Bad polling numbers and a collapsing worldwide and domestic scenario have actually delighted the usually sleepy president into action. There’s an issue. The closer you check out Biden’s op-eds, the less he needs to state. This brand-new, irritated, engaged Biden might be a respected author and speaker. He’s not an incisive one. He will not confess that there is a connection in between his ideology and America’s issues. He can’t choose in between offering Ukraine the weapons required to beat Russia or going for a war of attrition.
Biden’s Journal op-ed is a masterclass in passing the buck. He does not raise his “plan for battling inflation” up until midway through his thousand-word piece. The inner college teacher wished to send out the short article back to him with tips for edits. First and foremost: Don’t bury the lead!
The strategy itself is thin at best, nay non-existent, “The Federal Reserve has a primary responsibility to control inflation.” You would not understand that from listening to Progressives, consisting of a few of Biden’s candidates to the Federal Reserve, who argue that the Fed’s interest in cost stability sidetracks it from promoting complete work, green energy, and equity, addition, and variety. Now Biden desires the Fed to fix not just its errors, but his own. If his faith in an independent main bank can stand the test of greater interest rates, greater joblessness, and lower earnings, let’s see.
Sections 2 and 3 of Biden’s inflation strategy are the residues of his Build Back Better program: some tidy energy and real estate aids here, a couple of tax walkings there. He discusses his use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reduce gas rates, but not his interest in Venezuela and OPEC to improve the oil supply. When it comes to the apparent answers to America’s energy issues– a total turnaround of Biden’s hostility to oil and gas expedition and production, big financial investments in nuclear power, and emergency situation efforts to increase refinery capability– Biden has no words. His commitment to the ecological lobby and to green energy blinds him. If the Progressive Left turns down nuclear power, the “tidy energy future” it desires will not show up.
This inequality in between ends and indicates shows up in Biden’s Ukraine policy. The president informs New York Times readers that the United States sends out Ukraine weapons “so it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”
The preferred end state is “a democratic, independent, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression.” And Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky remains in charge. “I will not pressure the Ukrainian government—in private or public—to make any territorial concessions.”
If that’s all very well and good. Why, then, restrict the weapons shipment to systems with varieties of 40 miles? Why struggle and slow-walk over each tranche of assistance? Why engage with Russia in harmful and farcical settlements over Iran’s nuclear weapons? Why not take a more active role in peace talks between Ukraine and Russia? The Biden policy is fixed even as the shape of the war modifications in manner ins which prefer the assailant. The president’s objectives are admirable. His techniques are adjusted for a war that Ukraine is winning.
And Ukraine is not winning. At a minimum, they aren’t right now. The Ukrainians beat Russia’s effort at regime change. They have actually been far less effective in ousting Russian forces from eastern Ukraine and from their port cities in the south and southeast. Barring some change in Biden administration policy– in the varieties of weapons systems America supplies Ukraine, in the establishment of a humanitarian passage to alleviate the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports, or in a significant diplomatic effort– the war will develop into a frozen conflict with no clear resolution and with installing humanitarian expenses. How that scenario would assist anybody, consisting of Biden, is uncertain.
Once again, little Biden does or states makes sense from the vantage point of either policy or politics. He’s best to be rattled. He’s likewise unaware.
H/T The Washington Free Beacon
