Biden needs to remember 'the words of a president matter'

If politics don’t work out for President Joe Biden’s White House staff, they can always open a dog sitting business. After all, the president’s people have more experience walking things back than Cesar Millan.

Biden’s trip to Europe last week was supposed to bolster and reassure America’s allies, as we all watch in horror as Russian butchers continue their slaughter of the Ukrainian people. Instead, President Biden caused mass confusion and sent his team scrambling numerous times.

At one point Biden insinuated to American troops that they would be going into Ukraine to fight (they aren’t, according to the White House). And he also appeared to threaten Russia with chemical weapons should Vladimir Putin use them in Ukraine (the White House says we won’t).

Most consequentially, Biden’s dramatic final speech in Poland contained an ad-lib aimed squarely at Putin:

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said, issuing a very powerful statement that seemed anything but unintentional.

Minutes after Biden’s speech ended, however, an unnamed staffer snagged the leash off the wall in the White House mud room and started walking the president back: “The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change,” the unsourced statement read.

At such a consequential moment in his presidency, Biden and his staff left the world to collectively scratch its head. You could feel what’s left of Biden’s credibility draining as the drama unfolded.

“The White House’s contention is that he misspoke. If that’s true, that’s really bad. If he was being genuine but his own staff is undermining his message, that’s also really bad. Either way, total muddle at the worst time and place,” tweeted Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin.

But the muddle only got worse when Biden tried to unwalk himself upon returning to The White House on Monday.

“I’m not walking anything back,” Biden said to reporters in another unscripted moment. “I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt. I wasn’t then, nor am I now, articulating a policy change. I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel and I make no apologies for it.” 

The back-and-forth with reporters went on for some time, with Biden apparently growing frustrated as he was pressed.

The substance of Biden’s initial remark—that Putin cannot remain in power—was correct. How can anyone look at this senseless carnage in Ukraine and conclude otherwise? Biden said what we are all thinking and nodded to what should be an absolute bedrock of American foreign policy: that when the Russo-Ukrainian war ends, we cannot simply go back to the way things were or pretend that this never happened.

Whether he intended to or not, Biden issued one of the strongest statements of his presidency by simply channeling what most people around the world are thinking. If you like Biden, you can believe he meant it and said clearly what needed to be said. 

If you don’t, well, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn occasionally.

Either way, isolating Putin and inspiring the Russian people to get rid of him should absolutely be the policy of the U.S. Government. How can it be in our (or Europe’s!) interest to leave an aggressive madman in charge of such a dangerous country, when he clearly has no inhibition about invading his neighbors and killing or displacing millions? Putin has already said he considers Biden’s economic sanctions to be an act of war; the ship sailed long ago on keeping rhetorical and non-military provocations to a minimum.

Whether Biden should have ad-libbed that sentiment without consulting with allies and thinking through the implications of it all is up for debate. Most likely the answer is no, that more care should’ve been put into such a bold statement.

But once the words were uttered, the president should never have allowed his staff to undermine him so swiftly, which only added fuel to an already burning political narrative: that this president is weak, mentally feeble and a puppet of his unelected team.

It’s no wonder that the American people have little confidence in Biden’s ability to manage the conflict.

An NBC News poll released on March 27—before Biden’s walk back drama—found that 71% of Americans have “just some” (27%) or “very little” (44%) confidence in Biden’s ability to handle Russia, and that includes 43% of Democrats who said they have just some (36%) or very little (7%) confidence. An NPR/Ipsos poll taken last week showed just 36% of Americans approved of the way Biden was handling Ukraine overall.

Biden used to say “the words of a president matter.” The American people agreed and elected him over someone who places almost no value at all on words. 

Biden would be wise to remind himself—and his staff—of that the next time he needs a walk. The world—especially now—needs a strong and credible American president, not a pitiful terrier with a sore neck.