It is common wisdom that presidents tend to concentrate on domestic policy when first arriving in office and then pivot to foreign affairs, where they can act without having to worry, too much, about the reception their ideas will receive on Capitol. It can be said of Joe Biden that he’s making the switch in jig time.
Uncle Joe’s Revolving Plastic Inevitable Edible Pork Machine, a gizmo concocted more to satisfy a very divided Democratic Party, whose eyes, as is always the case after electing a new president, were even larger than their stomach than usual, than to enact meaningful policy, was essentially DOA from the get-go, but aging geniuses like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, knowing this was their last shot at a “legacy”, refused to listen to reason, particularly when it was coming out of the mouth of someone from West Virginia. As if that weren’t enough to demolish things for Uncle Joe (and it certainly is), well, we have inflation, which wasn’t supposed to happen, very expensive gas, and no baby formula. Makes a fellow want to start a war, doesn’t it?
Well, if you’re Joe Biden, the answer to that question is, why the hell not? In fact, why not start two? At opposite ends of the earth? It worked for FDR, didn’t it?
The simple fact is, Uncle Joe really likes the puff-chestedness thing. Makes a fellow feel good to talk trash, to take shit from no one, and the old neocon crowd, the AEI crowd, the AIPAC crowd, the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies crowd,1 the Washington Post crowd, they all can’t get enough of Uncle Joe’s senile swagger.
When Uncle Joe first came into office, there was talk of following, and even, wonder of wonders, expanding upon President Obama’s late blooming “maybe constant conflict isn’t the way to go” mentality, but that has clearly faded. Democrats can never stand tough—at least, they never do stand tough—on foreign policy—“standing tough” as in “standing up to the military intellectual complex”—because 95% of liberal voters don’t care about foreign policy. Domestic policy’s their thing, and Democratic presidents will always compromise on foreign policy substance in order to get the slightest crumb of domestic policy achievement, something I complain about a lot. And, as “Ukraine fever” demonstrates (something else I’ve complained about a lot), nothing clears the mind—or at least empties it—like a good old-fashioned war. It’s like a never-ending Super Bowl with real bullets!
Back in the sixties—waaaay back in the sixties—“smart” liberals used to say “there’s a lot of money in poverty these days”. Well, there’s a lot more in war. It’s “funny” that Americans don’t like shooting when it occurs in the U.S. But when it happens overseas, they can’t get enough of it.
Afterwords
I will note for the record that Biden is, literally, killing fewer kids than his predecessors, at least for the time being. Which is a good thing.
1. Next year, the JHUSAIS will be moving into ka-lassy new digs a mere stone’s throw (so to speak) from the U.S. Capitol (all the better to lobby you, my dear), so I won’t be able to make any more jokes about all the neocon think tanks infesting the 1700 NW block of Massachusetts Ave., a mere stone’s throw from where I live. SAIS will be moving into what once was the “Newseum”, a monument that USA Today founder Al Neuharth built to himself just as the Internet was destroying the news business as Al knew it. One can hope that the SAIS move will prove equally “ironic”, but I can’t believe we’ll be so lucky.
