In Oval Office Address, Biden Uses Honey and Vinegar To Seek Aid for Ukraine, Israel

President Biden’s Oval Office address on his $100 billion “urgent budget request” for Ukraine and Israel isn’t going to need deep analysis to know where he stands. The words are plain, as is Mr. Biden’s habit of presuming that he alone knows “who we are” as Americans.It was clear that the original text focused on Russia. Mr. Biden rehashed the invasion and included that “NATO has kept peace in Europe” for 75 years, a line that’s outdated with Ukraine at war. The remarks about Israel seemed like afterthoughts, though they hit their marks.Mr. Biden deserves credit for referring to Hamas as terrorists, refusing to soft sell their atrocities to a base that has its doubts. Thursday’s YouGov poll found that 61 percent of liberals oppose sending “weapons and supplies” to Israel, a reverse of the 60 percent of conservatives who support it.The reason Mr. Biden combined the two conflicts as a single “inflection point in history” is reflected in the YouGov results on Ukraine. Left and right flipped from where they stand on Israel, with 75 percent of liberals approving of Mr. Biden’s handling of that war compared to just 21 percent of conservatives.Mr. Biden said, “Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields,” and then minutes later that Israel must protect “civilians in combat as best as they can.” Had the lines been together, he would have made a stronger statement that the responsibility for safeguarding innocents in Gaza rests with the terrorists.That Hamas wants to see people killed so they can parade their corpses as props, Mr. Biden seemed to comprehend. He also displayed a realistic view by saying that he had secured “lifesaving humanitarian assistance” for the Palestinian Arabs that would be the first of many shipments “if Hamas does not divert or steal” them.Calling the Americans snatched by Hamas “hostages” couldn’t have been easy. The president — having repeated the shame of the Saigon evacuation in Afghanistan — now faces a dilemma analogous to the one in Iran that helped sink President Carter.One knock against Mr. Carter is that he made himself a hostage in the White House during that crisis. He confined himself to the Rose Garden. This may be why Mr. Biden touted the trips he made to Israel and Ukraine, lines that seemed to evince praise from the audience at home.“I’m told,” Mr. Biden said of his Ukraine visit, “I was the first American to enter a warzone not controlled by the United States military since President Lincoln.” He made a similar boast about Israel. “They tell me I’m the first American president to travel there during war.”Those points would have been better left for supporters to cite on his behalf. That Mr. Biden received five draft deferments from service in Vietnam made patting himself on the back — and seeking cover by saying others had made the claims — the weakest parts of his speech.Also off base was Mr. Biden again presuming to tell Americans how to be citizens. “In moments like these,” he said, “we have to remember who we are.” He described a nation that had been “enraged” after 9/11 and one where hate crimes are the norm rather than the horrifying exception.“We can’t let petty, partisan, angry politics,” Mr. Biden said, “get in the way of our responsibilities as a great nation.” This staked his position as the only one who is happy and free of selfishness, dismissing the honest disagreements that are a foundation of the democracy that he cast himself as defending.“If we walk away from Ukraine,” Mr. Biden said, “if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it,” a weak description of the outcome if funding is denied. More effective was his invocation of America as the Arsenal of Democracy in World War II. Also strong were his Cold War and War on Terrorism arguments that America is only as safe at home as our allies are overseas.Mr. Biden’s challenge is that the America of 2023 is in different circumstances than those of the past. It is $33.6 trillion in debt, with inflation, caused by ballooning spending, eroding quality of life. Citizens are more worried about the manifest pain of today than the possible problems of tomorrow.In times of crisis, people turn inward. A president has more success coaxing them out with honey than with vinegar. By seeking funding in a single request, Mr. Biden aims to force left and right to choose between arming both Ukraine and Israel or supporting neither. The House is having trouble choosing a speaker.Mr. Biden laid out his case in straight, familiar language. Congress will now decide how much the American people agree with his vision of who they are and whether they can still afford to be the Arsenal of Democracy.

In Oval Office Address, Biden Uses Honey and Vinegar To Seek Aid for Ukraine, Israel

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