President Joe Biden nominating Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court had the potential to help lift him from his second-year slump, but then Russia invaded Ukraine.
Despite the pomp and circumstance of Biden’s announcement, staged in the White House’s Cross Hall, the president shared cable news split screens with heart-wrenching images from Ukraine as Russian President Vladimir Putin closed in on the capital, Kyiv.
BIDEN’S FOREIGN POLICY WOES POISED TO DEFINE PRESIDENCY
Biden’s Supreme Court nomination of Jackson, who is on the precipice of becoming the first black female justice, comes after weeks of welcomed distraction thanks to speculation over the presidential pick. But political commentator Aaron Kall contends that Biden and Jackson will be overshadowed by Russia and Ukraine. It even took 16 questions about Russia, Ukraine, and the COVID-19 pandemic before a reporter asked about Jackson in the White House briefing Friday.
“If President Biden didn’t have bad luck, he’d have no luck at all,” Kall told the Washington Examiner. “Just when some positive news emerged on the COVID-19 front, a major land war erupts at a very politically sensitive time for the administration.”
Jackson’s nomination, an election promise made two years to the day before the South Carolina primary, follows Biden’s inability to convince congressional Democrats to back his $2 trillion social welfare and climate spending bill. That South Carolina contest, his first win in three presidential bids, revived his campaign, providing other relatively centrist candidates with a reason to endorse him over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Now, it is Biden’s struggles to turn Sanders’s policy priorities into laws amid foreign policy challenges posed by Afghanistan and then Ukraine that plague the president and his party before November’s midterm cycle.
Aggressive Progressive podcast host Christopher Hahn dismissed criticism that Biden’s response to Russia and Ukraine demonstrated weakness.
“There will be some rallying around the president during the Ukrainian crisis,” the former Democrat consultant said. “Furthermore, I believe right-wing politicians who are cheering for Putin because they think it harms Biden will face serious blowback for their support of the dictator’s war crimes.”
Both Biden and Jackson merged the Russia-Ukraine and the Supreme Court issues during the White House ceremony commemorating the judge’s nomination.
“As we watch freedom and liberty under attack abroad, I’m here to fulfill my responsibilities under the Constitution to preserve freedom and liberty here in the United States of America,” Biden said. “She cares about making sure that our democracy works for the American people,” he added of Jackson.
Jackson said afterward, “I am especially grateful for the care that you have taken in discharging your constitutional duty in service of our democracy with all that is going on in the world today.”
Some Republicans have indicated their openness to the thrice-Senate-confirmed Jackson, whom the chamber most recently approved last year. But the Republican National Committee has pegged her as “a far-left judge” rather than “a mainstream, consensus nominee.”
“True to form, Biden abandoned any pretense of unity and nominated a politician in robes instead,” RNC spokesman Tommy Pigott said.
For Hahn, Biden is leading at home and abroad, and next week’s State of the Union speech, his first officially, is “an opportunity to improve his standing in the polls.” Biden’s average approval rating is 41%, and his job disapproval is 54%, according to RealClearPolitics.
“Unfortunately, most of what’s driving his numbers down are outside his control, be it global energy markets or an unhinged tyrant waging a war of choice in Europe,” Hahn said.
Biden has to address Russia and Ukraine as former President Jimmy Carter did in 1980 after the then-Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, according to Kall. But the president cannot dwell on international relations when his audience is largely concerned with the pandemic, crime, and immigration before November, the University of Michigan director of debate and author of Mr. Speaker, The President of the United States: Addresses to a Joint Session of Congress, said.
“He has his work cut out for him on Tuesday night because he must simultaneously tout his legislative accomplishments while sympathizing with millions of Americans that have been left behind by rampant inflation and increased prices,” Kall added.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to preview Biden’s State of the Union remarks during her Friday briefing, but she did argue that Biden ran on returning “to a time where other leaders around the world could trust the word and the commitments of the United States.”
“What you have seen over the last few months is the president deliver on exactly that,” she said. “He has been leading the effort in the world to stand up to Russia — to stand up to the efforts, the aggression, the invasion of a sovereign country.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Biden will give his State of the Union address next Tuesday when only about 3 in 10 people consider him to be steering the nation in the right direction, according to a Fox News poll. That number can be compared to the 45% who felt the same on his 100th day in office last April. Fox News also found that only 44% are confident in Biden’s judgment amid a crisis. Another 55% said they are not.
