Biden and Blinken interviews reveal tragic ‘what ifs’
President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken just gave the equivalent of exit interviews to, respectively, USA Today and the New York Times. The most striking about the interviews was how the two men unintentionally highlighted opportunities they missed that might have averted November’s Democratic debacle and brought a close to the Gaza War.
USA Today’s Susan Page asked Biden, “Do you believe you could have won in November?” He answered, “It's presumptuous to say that, but I think yes, based on the polling” — a response that Democratic strategist David Axelrod called “nuts.”
Page’s next question — “Do you think you would’ve had the vigor to serve another four years in office?” — elicited an extraordinary admission from the president. “Who the hell knows? So far, so good,” Biden said. “But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old.”
When Biden announced his reelection bid in 2023 at age 80, he said nothing like that. His mantra in 2023 was, “It’s legitimate for people to raise issues about my age. And the only thing I can say is, watch me” — an invitation that did not work out well for him.
Biden’s admission suggests that he knew, or should have known, that he was irresponsibly rolling the dice on whether he could serve out a second full term. As to winning, it is “nuts” for Biden to think that, if he has doubts about his fitness for another term, that voters wouldn’t have had the same doubts.
The missed opportunity is that, had Biden gracefully announced in 2023 that he was not running for reelection because of his age, there would have been time, as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has since pointed out, for an open Democratic presidential primary that might have made Vice President Kamala Harris a better candidate — or produced a stronger alternative.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the Times pressed Secretary Blinken on the administration’s policy in the Gaza War. At one point, Blinken expressed frustration that there “hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender.”
But the Biden administration never tried to marshal public opinion against Hamas, whose strategy hinged upon the world pressuring Israel to stop fighting. The Biden administration’s proposed U.N. resolutions never demanded, for example, that Hamas put down its weapons and surrender.
In December, Blinken said publicly that Hamas needed to understand that the “the cavalry’s not coming to the rescue.” A reporter asked Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesperson, “Is he basically saying that Hamas ought to surrender?” Instead of a clear "Yes,” Patel undercut Blinken’s supposed message: “What is required here for this conflict to end is an agreement between two parties, of course, Israel and Hamas,” Patel said.
By not forcefully demanding that Hamas stop fighting, the Biden administration missed an opportunity to put pressure on the group that might have produced a durable cease-fire and hostage release last year. It also ceded the war’s narrative to left-wing governments, campus protesters and international human rights organizations.
The result was a moral inversion of world opinion. Israel, while justly criticized for its conduct of the war, was almost exclusively condemned, whereas Hamas, a terrorist organization that had deliberately put Palestinian civilians in the cross-fire by attacking Israel from its vast subterranean military base beneath Gaza, remained largely invisible. There was no “unanimous chorus” demanding Hamas surrender because Biden and Blinken failed to lead it.
“What if” history is inherently speculative, but Biden’s and Blinken’s missed opportunities are cause for regret.
Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.”