New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman loves US President Joe Biden, as his column Friday following the debate calling on the president to graciously step aside, attests. He also hates Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as his columns over the last three decades bear plentiful witness.
How painful, therefore, it must be for Friedman and others who share those views to wake up and realize that on one important metric, the two men are very similar: they share a stubborn belief that they must remain in power, that only they can do their jobs at this time, and that after them comes the flood.
Thursday night’s debate between Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump brought into the open what hitherto was primarily on the lips of Republicans, Fox News commentators and right-wing talk-show hosts: that Biden, at 81, is no longer cognitively fit for the presidency.
The Right’s relentless focus over the last three years on every Biden verbal stammer, every trip going up a staircase, every blank gaze in the wrong direction, every misstep – physical or oratorical – was downplayed by Democrats and Biden supporters as inconsequential.
On Thursday night after the debate, however, it was precisely Democrats and Biden supporters – like Friedman and the New York Times Editorial Board – who were calling on him not to run in November because age had caught up with him.
Many elements of Thursday night’s debate were jarring: Biden’s overall demeanor, Trump’s fact-challenged assertions, the lack of any substantive content, the I’m-better-at-golf-than-you exchange.
Equally staggering was the rapidity with which the pundits at CNN – which hosted the event – framed the debate: characterizing it within minutes as an unmitigated Biden disaster, holding it up as Exhibit A on why the president needs to step aside.
Viewers barely had time to digest what they witnessed – Biden’s underwhelming and at times confused performance, and Trump’s bombastic rhetoric and frequent outlandish claims (such as calling Biden a “Manchurian candidate”) – before CNN’s pundits had already reached their verdict: Biden should step aside. This rapid-fire analysis left little room for the audience to make up its own mind
Years hence, this will be held up as a textbook case of the ability of the media to shape reality.
But Biden, at least as of Sunday, is not buying into it, not accepting the media’s interpretation of events, and not making his decisions based on them.
How is Biden like Bibi?
And in that, he is Bibi-esque.
Had Netanyahu listened to the media and punditry’s interpretation of reality, he would have called it quits long ago, like when he was formally indicted in 2019 on criminal charges, or a few months into the current war.
Biden, so far, has given no indication that he intends to heed the calls of the media and the punditry, energetically telling a crowd in North Carolina on Friday, one day after the debate: “I know how to do this job... I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul that I can do this job. The stakes are too high, the stakes are too high.”
The claim that the “stakes are too high” is also one Netanyahu uses to cling to power. With a war raging in Gaza and another one lurking around the corner in Lebanon, the stakes are too high to change a leader at this time, he, or his supporters, argue. Only he can withstand world and US pressure to push for a Palestinian state at this time, and therefore “the stakes are too high” to replace him now.
Biden’s insistence that he can do the world’s most difficult job, though many of his friends and supporters watching the debate on Thursday now believe he is no longer up to the task, is also his way of saying that no one else can perform the job. Meaning, no one else can beat Trump.
Close Biden ally and confidant Delaware Senator Chris Coons said as much on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. Biden, he said, is “the only Democrat to have ever beaten Donald Trump.”
Asked if he really thinks that Biden is the only Democrat who can beat Trump, Coons replied: “I think he is the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump.”
It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure up staunch Netanyahu allies, such as Transportation Minister Miri Regev, saying that Netanyahu is the only person who can beat Hamas or stand up to international pressure.
Both Netanyahu and Biden, along with their supporters, appear to believe that their continued leadership is crucial to averting catastrophe. This stance reflects a strong conviction in their own capabilities and the perceived risks of leadership change.
Another striking similarity in the two men is a determination to stay the course despite signs that this is not what the public – even some among their base – want to see.
A Morning Consult poll released to Axios on Friday found after Biden’s debate that nearly 60% of the public think the president should definitely or probably be replaced as the Democratic nominee for president.
In Israel, a Channel 12 poll on Friday found that some two-thirds of Israelis believe Netanyahu should leave politics and not seek re-election. Two weeks earlier, in an Israel Hayom poll, some 60% responded that they want to see new elections, including 32% of Likud voters.
In other words, both Biden and Netanyahu are facing public opinion that does not want to see them continue. Yet, continue they do.
Netanyahu is continuing because he is not paying attention to the pundits in the television studios, the columnists, the polls or the tens of thousands of people now on the streets every Saturday night calling for new elections.
He dismisses it as background noise, showing no inclination whatsoever of going to new elections or throwing in the towel. The pundits will prognosticate, even colleagues within his party may try to steer him in a different direction, but he seemingly has blinders on and earplugs in and continues to plow ahead – deaf and blind to it all.
The same, at this point, is true of Biden. His closest friends in the media are calling for him to step aside, as are leading voices in the Democratic Party – though anonymously. Yet he is not listening.
Like Netanyahu, Biden is convinced that he knows best. Like Netanyahu, Biden –who has been in politics for over half a century – has a history of holding his ground and letting the background noise wash over him until it eventually disappears. And, like Netanyahu, he thinks he can do it this time as well.