As commander in chief, President Joe Biden has the implicit responsibility of leading the free world, which means he has to produce consensus at home and abroad. It’s hard enough for the president to convince strong-minded world leaders to follow him. It may even be more difficult to build a consensus among the American people on national security issues that they don’t think or care about very much.
The isolation of Western democracies after World War I was the prelude to World War II. The big difference now is globalization makes it harder and more dangerous for the West to separate itself from the rest of the world than it was then.
The classic demonstration of this principle was the difficulty President Franklin D. Roosevelt had in the late 1930s to build public support for the U.S. to join the fight with Great Britain against Nazi Germany.
Will the U.S. continue to respond to current threats? Yes, if the president has anything to say about it.
The current debate about the president’s proposals for additional military aid for Ukraine and Israel demonstrates the difficulty the president faces in convincing the American public to support his national security proposals. He wants additional military aid for both of these embattled nations, but his proposal will be a tough sell.
A new Marist University survey for the PBS News Hour and NPR illustrates the problem. Only 1-in-3 people want additional aid for both nations. Almost 4-in-10 Americans don’t want to send any more aid to either country. Another 1-in-6 want more help for Ukraine, but not Israel — and about the same number take the opposite position.
If you’re keeping score at home, that means most Americans don’t want extra aid to either country. The commander in chief needs to do a hard sell to make the military funding sale. The argument should be that Americans live in a dangerous world, and it’s dangerous for the U.S. to withdraw from the world while Russia seeks to expand its footprint in Europe through Ukraine and in the Middle East via Iran and Hamas. The price of doing nothing now could be very costly in the future.
The president has a lot on his plate in 2024. He also needs to demonstrate the success he has had restoring the economy from the ravages it endured during former President Donald Trump’s presidency. Biden has his work cut out for himself —internationally and domestically — but he still has almost 11 months to do both jobs before Election Day.
The post-World II period was the era when Washington figures liked to say that "politics stops at the water's edge." Now, politics inundates our relationship with the rest of the world. The Marist University poll found that 2-in-3 Democrats favor new funding for Ukraine, but only 1-in-3 Republicans feel the same way. Most Republicans want extra assistance to Israel, but less than half of the Democrats agree. Meanwhile, 4-in-10 Democrats desire new money for both nations, but only 1-in-4 Republicans agree.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to Washington on Wednesday, hat in hand, to plead for more help to fend off the brutal Russian invasion of his embattled nation. The optics could not have been more different: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) gave Zelenskyy the cold shoulder, yet he was warmly embraced by President Biden during a joint televised news conference.
The Speaker adjourned the House for the holiday without taking any further action to help Ukraine. It seems Russian President Vladimir Putin believes he can wait out American interest in Ukraine. The House adjournment without Ukraine funding indicates he might be right. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was apparently concerned enough about the problem to keep the upper chamber in session for an upcoming vote.
But the Republican House majority did take the time before departing Washington to vote for a presidential impeachment inquiry — even though there’s no evidence so far of any wrongdoing by Biden. The action on impeachment and the inaction on funding for Israel and Ukraine is a strong statement about misguided GOP priorities.
The dearth of congressional Republican sympathy for the fledging Eastern European democracy suggests the Republican Party has gone soft on Russia.
Sympathy for Israel was high after the Hamas slaughter of reportedly more than a thousand innocent Jewish residents on Oct. 7. Yet, a Quinnipiac University national survey indicated that support for the Israeli cause dropped significantly since the Israeli invasion of Gaza that has reportedly killed more than 18,000 Palestinian civilians and displaced millions more.
Public support for Israel will continue to decline unless Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu heeds Biden’s advice to restrict deadly military actions against Palestinian residents of Gaza. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has announced his intention to force a vote for an inquiry into the “indiscriminate” Israeli bombing of Gaza.
The daily television and social media images of dead and wounded Gazan children have hurt the Israeli cause. The source of the decline in support for the Israeli military approach has been most pronounced among young Americans. Only 1-in-3 Gen-Z and millennials favor additional U.S. assistance for Israel.
Americans are impatient in military struggles, and support for the Ukrainian freedom fighters has dropped over the course of the two-year-long war against Russian aggression. The same thing will happen in the Middle East if Israel continues its battle of attrition in Gaza. It’s now or never for the commander in chief. He must make the case that decisive U.S. action for Ukraine and for Israeli restraint can bring an end to both wars.
Brad Bannon is a Democratic pollster, CEO of Bannon Communications Research and the host of the “aggressively progressive” political podcast, “Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon.”