What Was Biden Trying to Tell Us?

Bill Kristol has some thoughts on Joe Biden's warning that there will be an international crisis within 6 months of a Barack Obama presidency to "test his mettle":

Take another look at what Biden said:


It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.... Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy....

I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate… And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.


So Biden expects a test of the kind Kennedy faced after his disastrous meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June, 1961, less than five months into Kennedy’s presidency. Biden’s presumably thinking of the Soviet-backed construction of the Berlin Wall a couple of months later. Kennedy did nothing, and was criticized for his weakness back home.

So--leaving aside the merits of what Kennedy did or didn’t do in 1961--Biden is forecasting that Obama will have what seems to be a weak response to a provocation from, say, Iran or Russia, and he’s urging the liberals of Seattle and elsewhere to stand with Obama against the expected domestic criticism.

In other words, Biden is forecasting inaction by Obama in the face of testing by a dictator. I suspect he’s right in this forecast. McCain might want to clarify this point. It’s not just that Obama’s own running mate expects an international crisis early in his presidency. It’s not just that Obama has a weak foreign policy record. It’s that Biden himself expects what will appear to be a weak response from Obama to testing by a dictator.

Now Biden presumaby thinks such an apparently weak response would be in our long-term interest. But McCain needs to force that debate: “Sen. Obama, will you in fact do nothing in response to a Putin provocation against Ukraine or a final push by Ahmadinejad toward nuclear weapons? Isn’t that what your running mate has forecast? Isn’t it awfully dangerous to forecast weakness on the part of an American president?”

I think Kristol has a point. What type of response by Obama would be most likely to drive his poll numbers down: Aggressive or passive? More Americans would respond favorably to an aggressive approach to a threat than a passive one, and Biden hopes the peacenik left will be there to provide Obama at least a few points of positive job rating after he screws up a big one.