George Will's strange new respect for Joe Biden

George Will argues that Joe Biden should send advanced drones to Ukraine and thereby instantly transform the battlefield to Russia’s detriment. Perhaps as inducement to the president, Will adds:

If Biden stays strong, with U.S. drones as a judicious increment in punishing Putin’s brutality by reversing his aggression, Biden’s presidency will be deemed by wise historians as, on balance, a success.

Will’s piece is what I call “carrot-stick punditry.” It’s common among left-liberal pundits.

They like to write, for example, that if John Roberts doesn’t vote their way in some important case, his statement about Justices being like umpires calling balls and strikes will be exposed as deceitful. If, on the other hand, Roberts votes the left-liberals’ way, they will grant him a strange new respect. . .until the next time he votes with the Court’s conservatives.

Conservative pundits rarely indulge in carrot-stick punditry. They understand that non-conservatives don’t crave their respect. However, some pundits made an exception for Joe Manchin.

Will himself once did the carrot-stick thing with Biden. This was many decades ago. Will had already established himself as a boy wonder pundit. Biden was a young Senator seeking to persuade the pundit class that he had gravitas.

I forget what Will was urging Biden to do (or not do). This was, after all, more than 40 years ago, and it hardly matters now. But I remember Will writing that if Biden didn’t act as Will urged, the young Senator would give up any pretense to being the serious, thoughtful legislator he claimed to be.

Biden didn’t do what Will wanted, and the pundit had a point. Few have considered Biden serious and thoughtful since.

But is Will correct in claiming that, if Biden will just send drones to Ukraine and “stay strong” in that war, wise historians will deem the Biden presidency a success? I don’t think so.

In my view, Biden gets good marks, on balance, for his approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The president has helped thwart the Russians without putting our military forces at rise.

Biden will get better marks if he steps up U.S. military aid, both in quantity and quality. But doing so won’t render Biden’s presidency a success.

For one thing, Biden should already have done more for Ukraine. It’s true that Ukraine is now winning the war. However, Ukraine has suffered massively. More than 10,000 Ukrainians have died and more than 10 million have been displaced. With more aid sooner, Ukrainians would have suffered less.

More fundamentally, Biden’s generally sound approach to a war in Ukraine can’t outweigh his failures at home. One need not be an America Firster in the Trumpian sense (and I am not) to believe that what happens in the U.S. is more important than what happens in Ukraine. Will identifies some of what Biden has inflicted on America:

He has ignited inflation, has made the swollen national debt into a potentially self-exploding crisis as the cost of servicing it rises, and has dispensed scalding rhetoric to a nation weary of such.

And that’s certainly not all. Will might have mentioned the immigration crisis at the border (and beyond), the lawless forgiveness of college debt, the appointment of leftist federal judges (including one to Supreme Court), the pitiful response to rampant criminality, and the ongoing corrosive imposition by the administrative state of wokeness in many of its forms.

Will isn’t one of those NeverTrumpers who, having preferred Biden to Trump, now tries to minimize Biden’s failures and flaws. He doesn’t hesitate to attack the president, as is evident even in the column under discussion.

I just think Will is wrong about how a wise historian will weigh the damage Biden is causing here at home against the good he is promoting in Ukraine. After all, Biden isn’t winning World War II, reviving all of Western Europe and saving chunks of it from communism with an economic recovery plan and military aid, or bringing down the Soviet Union. Nor have historians, wise and otherwise, rated the presidents who performed even these feats as successes without looking closely at their domestic footprint.

It will take much more than drones to redeem the Biden presidency in the eyes of wise historians.