In and of itself, President Joe Biden’s crib sheet isn’t a big deal. Politicians often need written cues to remind them to stress certain angles, especially when it comes to statistics or achievements. What makes Biden’s cue-card kerfuffle a bit scary is that the text reads as if was written for a recently graduated communications major on his first day at State Department. We’re talking about the most perilous world event in a while, and Biden, who has “more foreign policy experience than any president who has ever held this office,” needs a paper to remind him to say things like, “No. NATO has never been more united.” This is literally the talking point that every Democrat has been repeating unceasingly since Russia invaded Ukraine — as if keeping Western Europe united in the face of a Putin invasion is a major accomplishment.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” was the spontaneous conclusion of the president’s speech in Poland last week. “I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward the actions of this man. I was not advocating a change in policy,” read the cue card. This is the walk back. Presidents, it must be stressed, should not make major impromptu foreign-policy announcements simply because their ire is up — in this case, also because no such policy is in place, and, even if it were, a Putin successor might well be worse. Nor should the president of the United States need crib notes to spell out the nation’s most basic position on Russia.
Indeed, when Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked the president about his recent “gaffes” regarding American troops headed to Ukraine (he also talked about training Ukrainian forces in Poland), the use of chemical weapons against Russia, or regime change, Biden responded: “None of the three occurred.” It’s one thing to pretend Build Back Better costs “zero dollars,” and another to spout off during a war. Biden is not campaigning on Twitter anymore. The White House has spent more than a week publicly contradicting the president, creating the perception that Biden isn’t running foreign policy (and maybe that would be for the best).
You can whatabout this incompetence all you like. The president — and there is only one of them at a time — has a history of substituting emotional outbursts for arguments when he’s frustrated. His foreign-policy instincts have been unswervingly terrible for 50 years. Add to it his degenerating cognitive abilities, and it’s getting dangerous.
All he had to do was read a cue card.