Rematch (March 8, 2024)
Welcome to Home & Away. It was a week dominated by politics here at home although the world nonetheless managed to insert itself. As always, what happens here affects the world, and what happens there travels here.
MOTU and SOTU
The MOTU—mood of the union—isn’t great even though the SOTU – state of the union – is pretty good (especially in the economic realm). This was the backdrop for President Biden’s final State of the Union address before November’s election.
It was a good night—make that a very good night—for President Biden.
He was as much the candidate-in-chief as the commander-in-chief. Biden spoke with energy and conviction, putting to rest, albeit likely only temporarily, the belief that he is too old for the job. My friend Michael Beschloss compared him to Harry Truman; the name that came to my mind was Hubert Humphrey, the former vice president and senator from Minnesota known as the happy warrior. Biden appeared to relish the give and take with the vocal Republicans in the chamber and got the better of them.
Thirteen times he referred to his predecessor without mentioning his name. The contrast over policy toward Ukraine and NATO, fidelity to democracy, abortion rights, and a willingness to support bipartisan legislation to reduce illegal immigration was stark and worked to Biden’s advantage. His economic record and resulting trends are impressive. On the Middle East, the president did his best to support Israel while vocally urging it to allow aid into Gaza, act with military restraint, and be open to a two-state solution. My guess is that he neither helped nor hurt himself with voters who care about that issue. The same might be said about immigration. But all in all, a much better evening for President Biden than for the man who wants his job.
All Things Trump
Until last night, it was a good week—about as good as a week can be—for both Bitcoin and Donald Trump. Super Tuesday turned out to be super for Trump, as Nikki Haley suspended her campaign and he closed in on formally clinching the Republican nomination. Wednesday also saw Mitch McConnell endorse Trump, further underscoring Trump’s control of the no longer Grand Old Party and the continued failure of alleged conservatives to stand up for conservative principles.
Haley held off on endorsing Trump, instead saying cryptically in her concession speech that it was now up to him to earn the votes in the Republican party and beyond. She did not state what her conditions for endorsement are, so let me suggest a few things. First, a clear commitment from Trump to supporting democracy, more specifically, a willingness to accept the 2024 election’s results once they are certified by a nonpartisan, independent authority, along with a pledge to call on his supporters to eschew political violence under any and all circumstances.
In addition, her endorsement should be contingent on a number of policy commitments on Trump’s part, beginning with support for additional U.S. aid to Ukraine and for fulfilling treaty obligations to NATO allies. I’m doubtful Trump would agree to any of these conditions, and I also doubt whether Haley is prepared to hold off endorsing Trump if he rejected them, but now you know what I think ought to be the case.
The Supreme Court’s recent unanimous decision to block states from keeping Trump’s name off the ballot also worked in his favor. I happen to agree with this decision, as it would be an overreach for individual states to prevent an individual from appearing on a ballot for national office absent a criminal conviction. What I didn’t agree with was the Court’s announcement a few days prior that it would hear arguments on Trump’s appeal of two lower courts’ decisions denying him total immunity from prosecution for crimes he committed in office. The Court has now scheduled oral arguments for April 25, this term’s last day of hearings. As discussed last week, this all but ensures that the political calendar will outpace the legal, removing what might be the single biggest impediment to Trump’s electoral prospects.
For his part, President Biden dominated the Democratic primaries and Dean Phillips finally ended his long shot primary challenge. Unlike Trump, Biden explicitly reached out to those who voted for Phillips and Haley; whether they flip to him (as opposed to staying at home, voting for some third-party candidate, or voting for Trump) could prove significant this November. Similarly, there is the question of what all those uncommitted voters on the Democratic side will choose to do. The most important block of swing voters might well be those who are undecided and often stay home; the candidate who over the next eight months can persuade them to come out and vote (especially if they happen to live in one of the so-called swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) might well win.
Gaza & Gantz
Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet and Netanyahu’s chief political rival who is currently more popular than Bibi in Israeli polls, came to Washington over the prime minister’s objection…and while there got an earful from the vice president, secretary of state, and national security advisor on what Israel was doing, or should I say not doing, to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The meetings also allowed the Biden administration (and UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who did much the same thing the next day) to signal a preference for working with Gantz, and a good many others, as opposed to Netanyahu, who unfortunately seems to be entrenched and going nowhere.
The United States did introduce new independent policy measures, though, to demonstrate that it is willing to work around the Israeli government to relieve the humanitarian crisis. The Biden administration began air-dropping food and aid into Gaza, and, in his State of the Union address, President Biden announced the United States would set up a pier off Gaza’s coast and begin to deliver aid to the territory. Such measures are welcome steps in the right direction but hardly solutions given the scale of what is needed and the lack of control over distribution on the ground.
The Biden administration continues to push hard for a 6-week ceasefire that would include arrangements for increased humanitarian shipments along with additional exchanges of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The administration very much wants this to take effect before the onset of Ramadan, lest the holiest month in the Islamic calendar be marked by additional civilian deaths in Gaza. So far, at least, Hamas has resisted a new ceasefire, in part because it may believe that additional civilian deaths during Ramadan are precisely what would most inflame regional and international opinion against Israel.
As readers of this newsletter know, I have been quite critical of the Israeli prime minister and his policies. But I do not hold a candle to former prime minister Ehud Barak, who wrote in Foreign Affairs, “What Israel needs is the sober, determined, and farsighted decision-making of David Ben-Gurion. What it has, instead, is the narcissistic, manipulative, shortsighted approach of Benjamin Netanyahu.” I have trouble imagining his contempt comes through any less clearly in Hebrew.
Book Notes
About a week ago I joined Ezra Klein on his podcast, which quite a few readers of this newsletter were good enough to say nice things about. As he does with all his guests, Ezra asked at the end for recommendations of three books I had recently read. For those of you who did not make it to the end of the hour-long conversation, I want to mention all three here, as all are well worth the time and effort.
First is a book by Benn Steil, a former colleague of mine at the Council on Foreign Relations and economic historian, whose recent book is The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century.
Henry Wallace was F.D.R.’s third vice president. And if he had been his fourth vice president, or if F.D.R. had died before the end of his third term, history would have played out fundamentally differently. The idea that a Soviet sympathizer, or worse, a fellow traveler, could be a heartbeat away from the presidency, was quite extraordinary.
The second book, also by a former colleague of mine at CFR—in this case, Ian Johnson, one of this country’s leading historians of China—is Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future. It’s a story about courageous Chinese historians who have fought the Communist Party and its leadership, showing both how much the Party cares about history and that the battle over history is not some arcane thing about the past but a political struggle for the present and the future. And it’s wonderfully written.
Third and last, I got sent a manuscript out of the blue a few months ago.
I was going to put it aside, but I thought I recognized the author’s name, so I read it. It is the story of two diplomats who happened to be best friends and became ambassador and the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Saigon in the early 1960s. The book is Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict.
The author, Charles Truehart, is the son of one of those diplomats and was a boy living with his family in Vietnam at the time. The result is a book that operates at multiple personal levels but is also a tale of bureaucratic infighting at a critical moment in American involvement in Vietnam that asks the age-old question of what the United States should do when an ally is led by someone it does not see as a partner and does things that are not in the U.S. interest. You’ll hear more from me on this question in the coming weeks.
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Richard Haass in the news
Tuesday, March 5: Mainichi Shimbun on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Katie Couric Instagram Live on the war in Gaza. MSNBC Morning Joe on conflict in the Middle East (audio-only; begins at 35:01)
Thursday, March 7: MSNBC Morning Joe on the Israel-Hamas war (audio-only; begins at 37:13)
Check out The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens