Biden Answered the 3 a.m. Call

[kpete]

It’s hard to imagine that any of his rivals from the last election could have matched the president’s performance in this crisis.

By Franklin Foer

Joe Biden hasn’t received the full credit he deserves for his statecraft during this crisis, because he has pursued a policy of self-effacement. Rather than touting his accomplishments in mobilizing a unified global response to the invasion, he has portrayed the stringent sanctions as the triumph of an alliance. By carefully limiting his own public role—and letting France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz take turns as the lead faces of NATO—he has left Vladimir Putin with little opportunity to portray the conflict as a standoff with the United States, a narrative that the Russian leader would clearly prefer. He’s shown how to wield American leadership in the face of deep European ambivalence about its exercise.

His handling of the domestic politics of the crisis has been just as savvy. Although he could justifiably have portrayed Republicans as the party of Putin apologists, he refrained from dinging his political enemies. During his State of the Union address, he actively encouraged Republicans to feel as if they were his partners in a popular front.


MORE:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/biden-answered-3-am-call/626976/?utm_source=msn

[lindysalsagal]

1. and to think he very nearly didn't run at all.

[keithbvadu2]

2. Trump was always awake at 0300 but he was too busy tweeting to answer the phone.

Trump was always awake at 0300 but he was too busy tweeting to answer the phone.

[Budi]

3. President Biden is the most skilled leader in domestic & foreign policy

Say a damned prayer to whatever you believe in, be it luck, fate, god, universe...just hold the line President Biden, till the world one day looks back over it's shoulder at the transition of good vs evil that he, with the world of united allies so skillfully maneuvered us thru.

[llmart]

4. "self-effacement"

It is who Joe Biden has always been. He is self-confident and man enough to not need the constant patting of the back by himself or grandstanding at his accomplishments. No bragging, no constant "I, I, I" that we had to suffer through for four long and tedious years by tfg who could never give another human being (besides Putin) any credit for anything.

[bucolic_frolic]

5. Biden is healing the Republic

and offering wayward Republicans a path to rejoin American patriotism. He's moving to the middle. Those who remain on the fringe will be, for the most part, out of a job soon.

[crickets]

6. Biden is a once in several generations president,

exactly what the country needed in this moment. He's managing a deadly international crisis with amazing skill, and at the same time adroitly handling a vast backlog of domestic issues without feeling the need to pound his chest over it. In fact, he could and should take a little more credit from time to time, but if that's his one major drawback, we are so fortunate.

Thank you, President Biden.

[gratuitous]

7. One other contrast to those days

When the former guy was embarked on some stupid, hare-brained scheme, and we could see it was destined to fail (e.g., the border wall), his fanboiz would be all jacked up about how we were rooting for America (in the person of the former guy) to fail, and why didn't we get behind the President and his destined-to-fail brain fart?

Well, look who's actively pulling for President Biden to fail, and obsessively pointing out every last little temporary problem along the way?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

8. This is a great article on Joe

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. We are so lucky that Joe Biden Is POTUS and not that liar/idiot/coward TFG

Link to tweet

[question everything]

10. This was a main reason for Obama to choose him, for his foreign policy

knowledge.

And the author is correct; all the other candidates concentrated on domestic issues: free health care, free college, etc.