'People Don't Think Biden Knows What He's Doing': Political Scientist Discusses Foreign Policy

5 months ago

On "Forbes Newsroom," political scientist Charles Lipson discussed President Biden's foreign policy blunders.

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00:00 You also made the comparison before in one of our previous conversations of it's

00:04 it's like bowling when you have pins on two opposite sides.

00:07 Which one are you going to hit because the likelihood of knocking both of them down

00:12 is pretty much slim to none. So is there any indication of which

00:16 pin he's trying to hit here or how he's navigating this?

00:19 He's bowling it straight down the middle between the seven and the ten pin. Margaret Thatcher

00:28 said it's dangerous in the middle of the road because you get hit from both sides.

00:32 And I think that that's his problem now. But he is an old-fashioned politician in many ways.

00:41 He really does tilt to whichever way the wind blows.

00:46 And having been in the Senate for many years, you can see his shift in positions.

00:52 And that's not because he's a deep thinker who's absolutely re-evaluated his positions.

00:58 He's just a weathervane. And mostly he's a weathervane for the Democratic Party.

01:05 One thing that's changed in recent years, Brittany, and I find it interesting.

01:10 In the old days, you used to have politicians who would run, let's say, to the left in the

01:19 Democratic primary and then move back to the center in the general election. And they would

01:23 run to the right in the Republican primary and move back to the center in the general election.

01:28 That doesn't happen as much now. And it's an interesting question why.

01:34 I think one of the reasons, well, one of their responses has been to work more on

01:41 mobilizing your own voters rather than trying to get kind of undecided in the middle.

01:46 But I actually think, I wonder what you think of this. I actually think a lot of it has to do with

01:51 the fact that what you say in the primaries is now everything is captured on cell phones.

01:57 Everything is captured on video. You can't take one position in April and have a different position

02:05 in July. I think that's a great point because with the invention of Twitter and the invention

02:13 of screenshots, I mean, it makes it impossible to say, no, I didn't say that because people have

02:20 the receipts right there. And I am curious because usually foreign policy isn't a top concern for

02:26 voters in the presidential election. Now there's a few wars going on abroad. Is it a big deal,

02:33 this one? Well, we don't know how big a deal it will be. It's usually it's certainly not at the

02:41 top of anyone's agenda almost ever. The last time I can think of it being that prominent was in 1968

02:50 when we were in the midst of the Vietnam War, which is something that Bernie Sanders has brought up

02:55 again. Of course, it's when his life peaked. But the fact is, even then, we had all these

03:06 assassinations and we had chaos in the streets and we had a lot of other things going on.

03:12 I think the fact that there's an open southern border, there's inflation, there's slow job growth,

03:17 there's high interest rates, which make it hard to buy a house. Those kinds of things are going

03:25 to be at the top of people's agenda. But let's talk about foreign policy for a second. The reason

03:31 foreign policy is not at the top of people's agenda is partly because they can't see how it

03:37 affects your life. You go home to your apartment or your home, Brittany, I do the same to mine.

03:45 How exactly is a war in some distant region going to affect me? Whereas the price of beef being twice

03:54 as high as it was does affect me. But I also think that one reason foreign policy plays a lesser role

04:04 is that people think, well, the people in charge, they're experts. They really know what they're

04:10 doing. And so what's happening with the Biden administration is twofold. One, the issues have

04:21 become more prominent with the war in Gaza. But also, people don't think Biden knows what he's

04:29 doing. And that was a concept that was solidified with the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan.

04:37 There's also been a failed policy toward Iran, but they haven't really been called out on that

04:43 very much. The policy toward Iran under Trump was really squeezed them financially. They

04:52 hardly had any money left at the end of the Trump administration. So it was very difficult for them

04:58 to support all these regional allies that were part of their effort to become the hegemonic

05:04 regional power. When Biden came in, he didn't remove very many of the sanctions, but they

05:12 didn't enforce them. Iran is now rich. And the fact that U.S. oil production was cut down

05:20 gave Iran this wonderful chance to jack up the price of its own oil and sell it.

05:25 So the United States is now in the bizarre position of enriching countries like Venezuela

05:33 and Iran and maybe Russia. But I think people no longer think that, "Oh, I can leave these matters

05:42 in the capable hands of Joe Biden and Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken." They may or may not

05:50 know the names of the underlings, but they no longer think that any of this group knows what

05:55 it's doing.

'People Don't Think Biden Knows What He's Doing': Political Scientist Discusses Foreign Policy

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