The Man in the Middle

Probably not a good place to stay in the middle of the road.

Last week, I mentioned that President Biden’s statement on the pro-Palestinian protests was essentially correct. But my expectations for Biden are not especially high. He is not a great leader—just not as bad as the other guy who keeps insisting on running for the office.

To understand Biden’s leadership style, bear in mind that he is and always has been The Man in the Middle. His general approach is to feel out what the extreme positions are and find a way to be somewhere in between them.

This is partly what I’m relying on to get us through these four (and possibly eight) long years. Biden is not a socialist or a radical leftist. He is a conventional moderate welfare-state Democrat, a bit to the left of the middle of the country and squarely in the mainstream of his party. It may not always seem that this is where his party is, because he is considerably more conservative than the loudest bits of the Democratic coalition: the social-media left.

As I pointed out before, the problem with being the Man in the Middle is that it makes him to some extent a prisoner of the radicals. The farther out the far left goes, the farther he has to move to find the middle—or at least he has to pretend to move their direction in some way.

This explains Biden’s decision to withhold a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in a nominal attempt to pressure the Israeli government to stop its offensive in the last Gaza enclave of Rafah. I describe this as a nominal attempt because it was obvious to everyone, Biden included, that it would not stop the Israelis. As Will Selber points out in The Bulwark, this will not have much if any practical impact.

The United States Central Command will continue to provide operational support to the IDF as they did during Iran’s failed missile salvo a couple of weeks ago. America’s mighty intelligence community will still be collaborating with their Israeli intelligence partners, the Mossad and Shin Bet….

The IDF…is more than capable of finishing Rafah without our “offensive weapons.” 

Moreover, this was followed within a week by Biden’s approval of another $1 billion in military aid to Israel, most of it tank ammunition.

So nobody is being fooled here, not even the lefties who are apparently supposed to be fooled but have noticed that Biden is not really doing anything to restrain Israel.

So this was just political posturing, a symbolic gesture of mild disapproval meant to mollify the Democratic Party’s far left wing, whose support Biden has reason to believe he will need to win a close general election in November.

But if this is just politics, it’s bad politics—exactly the kind of bad politics I expect from Joe Biden and am frankly surprised we don’t see more often. In trying to appease both sides, he offended both sides. This move has turned off some of Israel’s supporters, but without winning back any noticeable support from the pro-Palestinian left. This is not a surprise when you recall what I said last week about the actual agenda of the pro-Palestinian protests.

And who knows, maybe it won’t really make a difference in November’s election, anyway.

Fortunately, it’s just bad politics. This one decision won’t stop or materially affect the war in Gaza because Israel is not that completely dependent on us.

But we see the same sort of thing having a somewhat more significant effect in Ukraine.

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Quantity Has a Quality All Its Own

No, Joe Biden’s policy in Ukraine is not an attempt to appease a pro-Russian faction here at home. He is simply following his ingrained habit of being cautious and moderate and the Man in the Middle.

That’s part of the context for a renewed Russian offensive in Ukraine. Let’s fill in the rest of the context.