WASHINGTON – In his first seven months in office, US President Joe Biden’s approval ratings consistently stayed above the 50% threshold. Just a month ago, on July 27, his average approval rating was at 52.6%, compared to 42.9% who disapproved of his job, according to FiveThirtyEight.
The combination of a bullish stock market, a reopening economy, and the wide availability of COVID vaccines, combined with advanced talks on a major infrastructure bill, made Biden’s first 200 days in office relatively serene.
All of that changed quickly, with last month’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. By mid-August, the president’s approval rating went under 50% for the first time, and by September 1, 47.2% disapproved of his job, compared to just 47% who approved, per FiveThirtyEight’s average.
And while there are still some 430 days left until the midterm elections in November 2022, the withdrawal is already playing a role in the Republican campaign. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, for example, posted a week ago an ad called “Biden’s Agenda of Abandonment,” featuring news segments about the withdrawal.
“It’s not a coincidence that Biden’s job approval ratings have slipped to their lowest level since he was elected,” said Josh Kraushaar, politics editor for National Journal. “While Afghanistan won’t specifically be the top issue for voters in upcoming elections, Biden’s incompetent handling of the crisis will have negative political ramifications.”
Kraushaar went on to say that Biden’s handling of Afghanistan risks being particularly damaging. “It highlights how much Biden’s rhetoric has been disconnected from reality, and how much his well-crafted image has been undermined under pressure. Once an administration loses control of the fundamentals, it’s hard to get them back.”
Kraushaar added that Biden’s best hope “is that the economy roars back and COVID dissipates well before the midterm election next year.”
Academics who focus on the American presidency agree that the Afghanistan debacle is going to prove costly for Biden, but differ over whether he’ll be able to recover.
“Situations like Afghanistan are not common, since the US hasn’t suffered many such defeats,” said Elizabeth Sanders, professor emerita at Cornell University’s department of government and a scholar of the American presidency and American political development. “Vietnam, a much worse mistake that cost Lyndon Johnson another term and a better place in history, would be a similar but more extreme case. And by the time the chance for victory was clearly absent, Johnson at least had racked up some important and lasting accomplishments [such as] major civil rights legislation and Medicare.
“I think this episode is going to hurt Biden seriously, despite the repeated media comments on public approval for exiting Afghanistan,” said Sanders. “His major asset was an image of sensibility, competence and the restoration of democratic diplomatic alliances. Those were surprisingly absent in his first year. And few of us realized that a man like Biden would so intimidate his advisers that they wouldn’t warn him of the obvious dangers of a Taliban takeover.”
She added that Biden “abandoned a military base full of equipment, and failed to anticipate terrorist violence or protect American soldiers.
“Though there is no reason to believe Trump would have been more competent in preparation for abandoning Afghanistan, his party is sure to make hay out of the amazing incompetence of the Biden administration,” said Sanders. “If he is able to get the proposed infrastructure and budget bills through, that will help. But that, too, may become less likely in the shadow of Afghanistan failure.”
On the other hand, Thomas Whalen, Boston University political historian and author, said that there is plenty of time for Biden to recover his former high standing in the polls.
“People forget [that] back in 1983, then-US president Ronald Reagan was criticized for his withdrawal of an American military force in Beirut, Lebanon, when a US Marines barracks there was destroyed by a suicide bomber,” he said.
“Over 200 marines lost their lives, but it did not make a lasting dent in Reagan’s political popularity, as the former Hollywood movie actor was able to win reelection in a landslide the following year,” said Whalen.
BUT ASIDE from the political ramifications, the withdrawal is also expected to create a new reality in the region, as the US seeks to focus mostly on China, Russia and climate change, with the Middle East as a secondary priority.
Former US ambassador to Afghanistan Michael McKinley said that the withdrawal from Afghanistan has implications for its neighbors in Central and South Asia, less so for US policies in the broader Middle East.
“There is no withdrawal from our commitment to the region, or to our friends and the challenges they face,” said the veteran diplomat, who served in the US Foreign Service for 37 years. “The United States retains a strong security presence with military bases in the area; It has well-defined foreign policy objectives to include preventing Iran from developing nuclear capabilities; sustaining the strong political and security relationship with Israel; and building on the progress made in lessening tensions between Israel and Arab countries,” he said.
According to McKinley, the priorities of combating extremism and terrorism have not changed.
“The United States is not retreating from the world and is in fact taking on an ambitious global agenda,” he said. “That includes dealing with the emergence of China and a more assertive Russia; working with our partners in responding to pandemics and climate change; and strengthening our alliances in Europe and NATO, and with Japan and South Korea.
“The withdrawal from Afghanistan should not be seen as signifying a lessening of American engagement on the broader key issues we and our allies face.”
Last week, as the US was in the middle of its final act of withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden met at the White House with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Biden said that when it comes to Iran, his administration is “putting diplomacy first, and we’ll see where that takes us. But if diplomacy fails, we’re ready to turn to other options.”
Some experts saw this statement as a way for Biden to reassure US allies that his administration is not turning its back on the Middle East.
Dennis Ross, distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Jerusalem Post last week that the president’s statement was “an important new signal from the Biden administration.”
Biden, on his part, delivered a speech on Tuesday and defended his decision not to move the self-imposed deadline of August 31, even as over 100 US citizens were left in Afghanistan. He argued that the withdrawal was a success, and emphasized that over 120,000 people were evacuated safely from Kabul.
“We will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries. We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it,” said Biden. “We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground – or very few, if needed.”
But in Israel, some are worried about the ramifications of last week’s events. Former Israeli ambassador to Washington Michael Oren said that “the speech did little to alleviate our concerns.
“The images of the American retreat from Afghanistan are deeply disconcerting for America’s allies in the world. It reflects on the willingness and ability to project power,” he said. “In this way, Israel is no different than Germany, Korea, Taiwan, and Ukraine; it is disconcerting.
“But for Israel, and for other countries in the Middle East, it was a triple shock. Not only was America being humiliated, but it was being humiliated by a fanatical Sunni organization, the Taliban, which theologically is very little different from Hamas, ISIS, and al-Qaeda.
“And, thirdly, the Taliban acquired vast quantities of sophisticated American arms, which will certainly proliferate in the region very quickly,” said Oren.
How could the administration reassure US allies?
According to Oren, Biden can take a page from the book of former president Gerald Ford.
“President Ford was president at the time of the American retreat from Saigon. And rather than wallow in that retreat, the Ford administration embarked on several very ambitious diplomatic initiatives, such as The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), antiballistic treaties; the Helsinki Accords and the Sinai I and the Sinai II agreements, which laid the foundation for the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreements.
“In the Middle East, in particular, the Biden administration [could] regain its standing, not by courting Tehran, but by expanding the Abraham Accords to bring in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states under America’s aegis and recreating the Pax Americana.”