One of my favorite political columnists, Wall Street Journal Deputy Editorial Page Editor Daniel Henninger, on Thursday described President Biden's first overseas trip as a "European vacation." Was that fair? Let's look at the facts.
"It has been a challenge to navigate through the steady drizzle of media admiration for President Biden's love-in with the Group of Seven leaders in Europe," noting that French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed Biden back to The Club. "What Club?" Henninger asked, before answering his own question.
"The Club Mr. Biden is joining – for all of us back home – is one the U.S. has stayed out of since World War II," Henninger wrote. "It's the club known as the European welfare state, a governmental system of lifetime paternalism built up by the nations of Western Europe after 1945." This is a system of high taxes and governmental control of almost everything.
Henninger pointed out that "total tax revenue from all governments in the U.S. as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is 24 percent compared to an average of more than 40 percent in seven European nations," giving the U.S. a tremendous advantage in a very competitive global economy.
"Mr. Biden purports that his proposed $3 trillion (with a ‘t’) in tax increases hit only corporations and 'the wealthiest,'" the astute columnist continued, "but if his entitlements become law, European levels of middle-class taxation … are inevitable." Think about it.
"Mr. Biden went to Europe as America's president," Henninger concluded. "After this week, he's also EuroJoe." In other words, in the journalist's opinion, Biden had an enjoyable European vacation, telling his hosts what they wanted to hear.
Nevertheless, we're not quite sure what our president told Russia's authoritarian and power-hungry president, Vladimir Putin. The conservative Wall Street Journal reported that the three-hour Biden-Putin conversations on Wednesday "seem to have involved a polite and frank discussion of strategic differences between the two nations." Biden said he gave Putin a list of 16 types of "critical infrastructure that should be off-limits to (cyber) attack. Period."
So far, so good, but the Journal added that "President Biden must now be prepared to enforce his red line, even as Russia tries to exploit ambiguities and deny responsibility," because that's what Putin always does "based on a rational calculation of what he can get away with to stay in power."
For its part, the liberal New York Times described the Biden-Putin Summit as "a series of polite but adamantly stated disagreements about which country is the greatest force of global disruption." The Times reported that "both sides expressed a desire for better relations but announced no dramatic actions to arrest the downward spiral that has already hurtled them toward the worst U.S.-Russian tensions since the Cold War." As a former Cold Warrior, I think that's an accurate assessment.
"The Hill" said Biden declared a foreign policy "win, even as tensions on cyber attacks and human rights loom over the future" of the U.S.-Russia relationship.
So was Biden tough enough in his conversations with the clever and wily Russian leader? The Wall Street Journal hopes our president delivered a clear message to Putin, putting the Russian leader on notice that his "ambitions in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and cyberspace" will be firmly opposed by the United States because Putin's aggressive ambitions are clear threats to our national security.
I wish Biden well in his efforts to manage this complex and potentially explosive international relationship. Maybe he didn't have a European vacation after all.
Appeal political columnist Guy W. Farmer spent 28 years in the U.S. Foreign Service during the Cold War.
