The Pick is in! And How Does Biden Pick Up Putin’s Pieces?
Hello Hackaroos,
Well, President Biden’s planned State of the Union looks a lot different than it did just last week – even just since our last newsletter. How does President Biden not let Putin’s actions become his entire agenda? Well, we got part of the answer today when Joe Biden made his Supreme Court pick official. That’s where we begin before some tidbits.
As we head into the weekend, we want to take your questions on all things State of the Union. We’ll answer some before and then after the big speech.
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And, of course, don’t forget to get our brand new Hacks on Tap beer mugs. We just don’t recommend taking a sip every time Biden says the word Ukraine on Tuesday: https://themerchspot.com/collections/hacks-on-tap.
Let’s begin…
THE PICK IS IN!
GIBBS: As predicted in our newsletter at the beginning of the year, not only were we right about the retirement of Justice Breyer (though maybe we didn’t see it happening this early), we were also right about the selection of Judge (and former Breyer clerk) Ketanji Brown Jackson for a seat on the ever important Supreme Court. This is a good, smart and solid pick. She was confirmed by the Senate just last June for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia with 3 Republican votes (Senators Collins, Murkowski and Graham). So, we have a good pick, we have the potential for GOP votes, even if just holding the Dems together (something that’s consistently happened with ALL of Biden’s judicial picks thus far) means we have the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. With a lot of unknowns on the foreign policy side (more on that below), it’s good that Biden kept his deadline here. Starting this process the way they have is important to winning it in the end. The challenge of a complicated world didn’t interfere with this. Now, let the fun and the debating begin!
MURPHY: Agree! Biden made the safe and smart pick. Paul Ryan has already endorsed this pick and other responsible Republicans will follow. My guess is there will be minor Fox News harping, but things will move fast; Biden has adroitly denied the bomb throwers in the GOP any real issues on this nomination to make trouble. So a needed political win for the POTUS.
WHAT’S CHANGED FOR BIDEN IN THE LAST 72 HOURS AND WHAT HASN’T?
GIBBS: Everything that's been predicted about Ukraine by the Biden Administration has unfortunately come to fruition and now the stakes are just enormously higher for Biden. Presidents and their White House staff have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. What Biden is facing is walking and chewing gum while juggling. In this case, he’s juggling flaming torches. There's a lot of things that we know and a lot of things we don't know. The rhetoric that Putin used Wednesday night around confrontation with nuclear weapons was deeply alarming even for him. The actions of the last few days have rightly been compared to those of Hitler in 1939. The European continent is confronting a land war not seen in decades. And though we can watch on cable television (while Biden can see through extensive intelligence), we can have a sense of the short term for Vladimir Putin, but what we don't know is what's his medium and long term focus. Does he have designs on other former Soviet republics? Will that distorted vision bring him closer to a NATO confrontation? Unfortunately, this is a man who is not likely to see his irrationality deterred because of the limited tools we have in our toolbox to actually get him to change his mind. So as you read this, there's just a lot of unknowns.
MURPHY: Biden is doing well with this crisis. As we discussed on the last pod, he should handle the bulk of the Ukraine business in a speech to the nation, then move on to the SOTU. I’m hoping that Ukraine section, be it in a primetime TV address or in the State of the Union speech lays out in detail both the hardest possible sanctions on Russian and America’s commitment to arm the Hell out of the Ukrainian forces as soon as possible.
GIBBS: Exactly. Once again, I'd underscore the sheer amount of time and energy this is going to take out of the White House to keep discussions going with our allies, to cajole European to doing things such as continued sanctions that otherwise their leaders know will be negatively impactful on their economy. How does Joe Biden manage wanting to show progress on our fight against climate change, but understand that increasing domestic oil production may be what's necessary or Americans could potentially start paying a lot more for gas in a way that they don't understand? What does Biden need to do now? Again, far more questions right now than answers unfortunately.
MURPHY: The Italians seem to be the big NATO problem right now. They are wiggling around the sanctions – trying to keep it easy and legal for Russian tycoons to buy their Gucci loafers – and along with Germany are resisting the effort to drop the biggest bomb in the sanction article, throwing Russia out of the SWIFT international banking system. Time to put the squeeze on Italy too. Maybe an American consumer boycott? This is no time for Ostrich-skinned loafer profiteering. Come on Italy, find your spine.
GIBBS: Yup and maybe the best visualization of Biden's response will be on Tuesday night during the State of the Union because there's now a significant chunk of that speech, that’s going to be occupied by an issue that wasn't part of the first State of the Union planning meetings a few months ago. (Listen to the great podcast we did with Jon Favreau – not the actor/ director – around the speech process of how that comes to fruition). This was a moment that I think he and his team looked at as a way of resetting his presidency. And he now has to do that with all of the challenges to his poll numbers and at the same time confronting a whole lot of different things that probably wasn't in a political planning document at the beginning of the year. So just an enormous amount of challenging stuff. One thing that I think is imperative for this White House to continue to do even after the State of the Union is to have President Biden talk in plain and simple terms and get as many of the American people to understand what's at stake here in Ukraine. Murphy, you’ve talked for weeks about that foreign policy speech. While I think they missed the moment to give one foreign policy speech, I think they really have to use the time that they have every day to remind people just how important these next few days are for world order and how Americans could feel it in their daily lives.
Frankly, this is where the fact that the President doesn't do a lot of interviews is a challenge for him and the White House communications team. It puts a lot of pressure on Biden’s public statements to get it all right, both substance and tone. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting he starts Tweeting like the last guy, but more interviews could help.
MURPHY: Yes, a domestic policy is on hold for a beat here. We have a land war in Europe with good guys and bad guys. That is the big thing on the POTUS desk and the White House communications needs to respect that. The world stage is a good platform for Biden to re-earn his strong, tough President spurs. I’d start there. As I wrote above, Biden should fill in the Ukraine assistance commitment, announce that we would host a Ukrainian Government in exile, continue to beef up our military deployments to help protect Poland and the Baltics and make it clear to Putin that he is now a pariah of the first order. Then link it to our economy; Putin is going to try to raise gas prices, create economic pain. Ask the American people to take the side of freedom. They’ll join without hesitation. Maybe even rebrand the clunky BBB into a simpler, less costly, American Economic Strength package. This can be a huge moment of Presidential leadership; Biden should seize it.
TIDBITS:
GIBBS: I doubt there's anybody on this planet that doesn't have an opinion on Donald Trump. But what surprised even me is watching him the last few days criticize a President and laud a “President” and realize that the one he criticized was the American President and the one he lauded was the Russian President. That fact should change the way some people view Donald Trump, but I fear it won't. But what we watched on television, in interviews, at an event at Mar a Lago while Vladimir Putin shelled Ukraine and the world reports about a list of people that Russia has drawn up to kill and imprison – for Putin to be lauded on the stage by a former President while this is happening is a level of repugnance that even surprises me about Donald Trump. I’m not sure there's a more remarkable trend line in American politics in the last 50 years than the line between Ronald Reagan's “Tear down this wall” and Donald Trump's “Putin’s pretty smart.”
MURPHY: Trump on dictators has always been awful, be it Putin or the thug in North Korea. More and more, the new post defeat Trump is showing his madness. This Putin love is the starkest moment yet. You can feel the uneasiness in the party as Republicans, Democrats and Independents all across America cheer for the brave people and courageous leaders of Ukraine. Trump, and the hostage wing of the GOP, are crawling out on a shaky limb here and I for one will enjoy watching it break. It is true that the amount of nut-wing GOP love for Putin is disgraceful. Just sickening. And of course Fox News Stupidity and Appeasement profiteer Tucker Carlson leads the parade of shame. I guess some people just heart jackboots and dictators. Shame, endless shame, on you Tucker. And a note to the GOP. When world stakes are high and a crisis is roiling, we have a long honorable tradition of bipartisan support of our President. Time to do it again. Hacks like Rep. Elise Stefanik should sit down and shut up and save their cynical games for the special loony pandering moment on the midterm elections calendar in October, not now.
GIBBS: Yeah, to your point, it’s not only Trump. It’s, of course, Trump’s party now. There’s also the US Army veteran and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, among others, who have jumped into the Putin party. These guys went from spending four years normalizing Vladimir Putin to now glamorizing and idealizing him. It's stunning to me. When segments of the Republican Party think that authoritarians like Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Putin in Russia are the people that should be lauded and lifted up as models, you have to shake your head and wonder really what the hell happened?
On that note, we’ll see you on Tuesday for a special pre-SOTU edition. Check out our all three Hacks review on the pod after the speech as well. Remember to send us your questions!
Murphy and Gibbs