President Joe Biden’s crisis management skills are being questioned after the White House underestimated public reaction to the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan and was slow to address the nation about the messy conclusion to the 20-year war.
Though the precarious conditions in Kabul appear to have somewhat stabilized, Biden’s continued absence from the White House has been noticed as his administration works to evacuate tens of thousands of U.S. citizens and Afghan allies before a self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline.
AFGHANISTAN TESTS BIDEN’S CLAIMS OF EXPERIENCE AND PREPARATION
Presidents take vacations, according to historian David Pietrusza, who quipped the White House has some traits in common with a prison.
“But nothing offhand seems to match this current situation. For an administration concerned about the ‘optics’ in Kabul, they have aggravated their predicament by horrible ‘optics’ in Washington,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Woody Allen famously once said that ‘90% of life is showing up.’ Sometimes, leadership is 90% remaining at your post.”
David Greenberg, a historian and Rutgers University journalism professor, disagreed with critics on Biden’s delayed remarks about Afghanistan. In fact, Greenberg dismissed complaints as “nonsense.”
“Kabul fell Sunday. He spoke Monday. It was a fast-moving situation, and he addressed the public quickly,” he said.
But Greenberg agreed the Biden administration’s efforts to extricate citizens and special visa applicants from Afghanistan via Hamid Karzai International Airport, a Kabul airfield now secured by the U.S. but surrounded by the Taliban, were “a huge disaster.”
“The total and rapid pullout from Afghanistan, consigning 37 million people to living under a barbaric regime, will be a permanent stain on Biden’s record,” he said. “That, far more than any insider kibitzing about the timing of his speech, is the problem.”
Images of seemingly desperate Afghans holding on to the outside of an airborne U.S. military plane or falling from the aircraft mid-flight have shocked the world. But so has Biden’s schedule during the chaos, and how he connected with his first leader, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, about Afghanistan on Tuesday afternoon.
Biden will return to the White House Tuesday night, according to press secretary Jen Psaki. He is expected to talk about the coronavirus pandemic as his administration prepares to deliver booster shots to immunocompromised people and sit for a TV interview. He left the executive compound last week in favor of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, despite ordering 6,000 service members be repositioned the night before so they were ready to deploy to Afghanistan if needed. He later moved to Camp David, the presidential retreat outside of Washington, D.C., shortly after his remarks Monday at the White House.
“The president worked throughout the entire weekend. I was intimately familiar with his working habits,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Tuesday. “He was monitoring developments, hour by hour, throughout that entire time. And has been making a series of decisions about troop deployments, giving us direction and guidance about how to take the shape of this mission and make sure that we’re executing it. And at every turn, asking our military, ‘Who is leading this mission and executing this mission with bravery and valor, what do you need?'”
Biden relented to pressure on Monday to speak, not the first time he has changed directions in the face of a backlash. For example, the president raised the country’s refugee cap to 62,500 after rebukes from far-left Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He also encouraged his Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to extend the federal eviction moratorium due to COVID-19 following Missouri Rep. Cori Bush’s sleep-in on the steps of the U.S Capitol.
Biden’s Camp David trip was a truncated affair. There are still tentative plans for Biden to spend two weeks in Delaware, either his lakeside Wilmington home or seaside Rehoboth Beach property. Media guidance last weekend even outlined a split itinerary between Wilmington and Camp David. The White House had been cagey about why that was the case, given intelligence as recently as last week indicated the Afghan government would be in charge for at least 30 days. That intelligence was reflected in Biden’s rosy outlook for Afghanistan.
“It’s just a — just his travel logistics plans,” Psaki said at the time. “He likes Camp David. It’s a place to be outside, spend time with family, and certainly has beautiful, beautiful scenery there.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Psaki also cut her vacation short this week to tweet perceived highlights from Biden’s 18-minute speech from the East Room. Although an automatic “out of office” email response suggested she was on holiday until Sunday, she and Sullivan briefed reporters from her podium on Tuesday.
