The Bully and the Pulpit (January 26, 2024)
Welcome to Home & Away. Here at Home, my reflections are largely tied to the New Hampshire primary and its aftermath; as for Away, it is hard to get away from the Middle East. So here goes.
Off to the Races
If history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes, and it is rhyming pretty closely these days after Donald Trump’s win in New Hampshire. We are less than ten months away from what appears to be Biden-Trump the sequel. I understand that little in life is inevitable other than death and taxes (and increasingly—for some—taxes have fallen off this list), but a rematch seems highly likely, short of a medical event affecting either of these two men bracketing 80.
Trump’s wins demonstrate his strengths—he has now won both Iowa and New Hampshire with outright majorities—but also his weaknesses, in that non-Republican, i.e., Independent, support for him is thin. Support from more traditional Republicans is also uncertain. Trump’s ungracious, crude comments about Nikki Haley following his New Hampshire win won’t help him with this. It certainly won’t help him with women, exacerbating a political problem caused by the Republican stance on abortion. He clearly never encountered Churchill’s dictum that in victory, magnanimity. As was the case in 2020, there are simply not enough MAGA Republicans to put Trump, or any Republican, over the top, but he does not appear interested in winning over voters outside of his base.
These limitations, plus the fact that Haley plans to stay in the race for now, is good news for Joe Biden, as Haley’s recent statements show she is increasingly prepared to go on the offensive. (I expect she will end up in more than one Democrat attack ad.) Her pivot is enough to make one wonder what would have happened in New Hampshire had she been a more energetic, aggressive candidate from the get-go. My guess is that she lost out by straddling: not Republican enough for this generation of Republicans, not independent enough for many Independents. I should add that I no longer see a path for her to win; to paraphrase renowned political guru Frank Sinatra, if she couldn’t make it there, it is hard at this point to see her making it anywhere, including her home state of South Carolina.
It is difficult for me to write about Trump and Haley without saying something about Republican foreign policy. We now see two strands represented. Trump is the reincarnation of the Pat Buchanan isolationist, nativist, protectionist camp. And Haley, in many ways, resembles George W. Bush and the neo-cons with their assertive internationalism, mistrust of international institutions, and near unconditional support of Israel and democracy promotion. Under-reach and over-reach. Missing almost entirely is the realist tradition associated with Eisenhower, Ford, Nixon, and George H. W. Bush. (Ronald Reagan was also more of a realist in practice than his rhetoric suggested.) The decline of Republican realism is unfortunate, as there is a lot of historical evidence to suggest it accounted for much of this country’s foreign policy success over the decades. Ironically, if realism is to be found anywhere today, it is in elements of the Biden administration’s foreign policy.
Normalizing the Abnormal
Let me make a larger point about the race, as too many people who should know better are getting comfortable with the prospect of a Trump victory. To start, they are getting ahead of themselves. Among the general electorate, Trump is still vulnerable to substantial political fallout from a conviction in one of his many trials. In addition, the polls have largely been good for Trump as they reflect a race defined by a referendum on an unpopular incumbent president. But Biden could do a lot for himself by accelerating an end to the war in Gaza and either changing the situation on the southern border or changing the politics of the issue. In addition, Biden should pick up an economic tailwind, as the U.S. economy continues to steadily grow (3.3% in the latest quarter), inflation is moderating, and the Federal Reserve looks poised to lower interest rates before the election.
I say this recognizing that changing the reality around the southern border won’t be easy given that Republicans (at Donald Trump’s prodding) have clearly decided it is better to keep the issue alive through the election than to do something useful about it. That American support for Ukraine becomes collateral damage only makes a bad situation worse. If anyone needed an example of putting party and a person (in this case, the presumptive Republican candidate) before country, this is it. The president should call the Republicans out on this and make it clear to the American people that while he may have gotten it wrong on the border before, he is prepared to get it right now, if only the Republicans would let him.
It troubles me that some seem to be persuading themselves that Trump’s first term wasn’t that bad and a second wouldn’t be as dire as many predict—or that Biden’s shortcomings justify taking the risk anyway. I understand the frustrations with the Biden administration, and while it has done many good things on the economy and with Ukraine, I would argue they got it wrong on Afghanistan, trade, and the southern border. But these are matters of policy. What distinguishes Trump and the prospects of a second term for him, is not just that there would be specific policy shortcomings, but that he appears prepared to threaten the mostly benign structure of international relations as we have known it for seventy-five years and American democracy as we have known it for two and a half centuries. The damage his first term did to both is clear, and he is likely to be even more radical if he wins again. You don’t have to take my word for it—those who served under Trump during his first term have often been the most critical of him and have been sounding the loudest warning. This is a risk we cannot afford.
Buffer
As for the Middle East, I wrote last week that the first signs of what can be described as a post-October 7 Israel are emerging. The tragedy of the last week (with the death of over twenty Israeli soldiers in a single day in Gaza) should accelerate this shift toward a more realistic approach. Continuing the war with its steep costs makes less and less sense given that even Israeli government officials are admitting what many have said all along: a total elimination of Hamas is impossible. The time has come to end major military operations, something that would pave the way for the return of more hostages while allowing Israel to go after high-value targets, such as Hamas leadership, if the opportunity presented itself.
What makes as little sense as Netanyahu’s absolutist war aims is the associated project of building a buffer area inside Gaza (21 of the 24 slain Israeli soldiers mentioned above were working on such a project when a Hamas missile killed them). Yes, Israel should do more to deter, and, if need be, defend against threats from Gaza, but this should be done from inside Israel’s own territory, lest its attempts to build a buffer zone appear to be an illegal expropriation of additional land. That move would give strength to the argument that Israel has designs on the territory of Gaza and the West Bank and no intention of allowing a Palestinian state. It would also be another example of Israel directly challenging the Biden administration, which has said explicitly, and multiple times, that it opposes any reduction in Gaza’s territory, including the establishment of buffer areas.
A few paragraphs above I argued that President Biden should take his case about the southern border directly to the American people. Here I would say that the president should also take his case for how Israel should approach Gaza and the Palestinian issue more broadly directly to the Israeli people. The Oval Office is the world’s most powerful pulpit; the time has come for Joe Biden to use it.
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Richard Haass in the news
Thursday, January 25: MSNBC Morning Joe on U.S.-Israel relations and the Israel-Hamas war.
Check out The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens