Well, I’ll say this about John Judis. He doesn’t mince words. Today John B. Judis has a highly negative post about President Biden’s foreign policy accomplishments at Compact. Here’s the summary:
Success in foreign policy can be gauged by whether an administration can see beyond immediate events and anticipate and head off trouble before it arises. By that measure, the Biden administration has been an abysmal failure.
and I agree with Mr. Judis’s assessment of why the Biden foreign policy has failed:
The misjudgments of the Biden administration and the wider establishment may have also stemmed from adherence to a foreign-policy idealism, mixed with tough-guy hawkishness that has gotten the United States in trouble before. The administration has portrayed itself as the defender of democracy against autocracy and of “a rules-based order [against] one governed by brute force,” but the conflicts of nations continue to defy these antinomies.
although I’m not in complete agreement with his point by point analyses. He goes into some depth on how President Biden has failed in each of the following cases:
- Negotiating a new treaty with Iran
- Withdrawing from Afghanistan
- The war in Ukraine
- Israel’s war in Gaza
which is a succinct explanation of why President Biden won’t be running for re-election on the basis of his foreign policy accomplishments. Fortunately for him, Americans don’t much care about foreign policy.
Domestically, President Biden has successfully gotten quite a bit of legislation enacted and, IMO his most important accomplishment, he concluded the federal declaration of the COVID-19 epidemic. His legislation reminds me more than anything else of the old wisecrack about a wife being a person who supports you through the troubles you would never have had if you hadn’t been married. Considering that 80% of American households consider themselves worse off now than pre-COVID it will be hard for President Biden to run on his domestic record.
All of which explains why he’s running on the platform of not being Donald Trump. That’s a pretty low bar. 330 million Americans can say the same thing.
“ IMO his most important accomplishment, he concluded the federal declaration of the COVID-19 epidemic.”
I am not sure whether to laugh or to cry. The closest analogy to this “achievement” is the Kaiser bringing WWI to a close with his “actions” in 1919.
Let’s count how many ads Biden will launch crowing about his achievements in the pandemic or panning Trumps handling of it while in office.