Biden is a self-confessed blunder machine — his loose language often landed him in the Senate and was why some Obama administration aides initially distrusted him as vice president. But Biden is now the commander-in-chief and can say whatever he wants — until the cleanup operation begins. Often, this comes across as disrespect to the President. It seems that he doesn’t know his own mind or that he has escaped a script set for him by subordinates. It offers an opening for Republicans who question his cognitive ability and fitness for prime time. But the problem also runs deeper: A president’s words resonate. In times of crisis, lives can be on the line. Their words move the markets. The constant correction sows confusion about Biden’s authority and leadership. Politicians often run for office promising to tell it like it is. Biden’s friend, the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, for example, propelled the Republican nomination in 2008 with a “Straight Talk Express.” But honesty and brutality are often not conducive to governance. When the bigwig goes off-message, it can short-circuit policy mechanisms and can undermine nuanced positions on Capitol Hill. That’s what happened this week, when Biden’s declaration that the pandemic is over in a “60 Minutes” interview undermined House and Senate Democrats’ push for the White House’s own request for billions of dollars more in Covid-19 funding .

Biden on Taiwan: strategic confusion or genius?

Biden has sparked an international row over his latest pledge, in an interview broadcast Sunday, to defend Taiwan if China invades. He has said something similar at least three times before, violating the whole principle of “strategic ambiguity” that leaves it unclear how the US would respond. The policy is designed to make China think twice but also to avoid giving Taiwanese a sense of security that could spur a declaration of independence. But every time Biden apparently moves the ball to Taiwan, his officials bring it back. There’s no doubt that Biden knew exactly what he was doing when he answered “yes” to a pointed question from CBS’s Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes” about whether he would deploy U.S. men and women to defend Taiwan if Taiwan was being invaded. But national security adviser Jake Sullivan insisted Tuesday that Biden had not changed policy and dismissed it as a response to a “hypothetical” question, even though US intelligence agencies believe China is building a force capable of seizing Taiwan. “The President is a direct and straightforward person. He answered hypothetically. He had answered it in the past in a similar way. And it was also clear that he did not change the US policy towards Taiwan,” Sullivan told reporters. Biden did reaffirm his support in the interview for the “One China” policy and other core diplomatic texts with China. But Sullivan’s comment suggests there is a gap between US policy toward Taiwan and what Biden says it is. This will create fears of misunderstandings that could be dangerous. Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill argued Tuesday that strategic confusion can be a virtue — after all, if Americans can’t figure out what the policy is, then China doesn’t stand a chance. “Even a walk back, it becomes strategic ambiguity, so I think it’s all part of strategic ambiguity,” Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said Tuesday. His fellow Connecticut Democrat, Sen. Chris Murphy, also argued that this is less a disconnect within the White House than an example of strategic acumen. “Whether it’s intentional or not, it certainly serves the purpose of keeping China guessing. And that’s the whole point, is to be able to defend Taiwan without making the explicit promise in advance,” Murphy said. But Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the uncertainty was damaging. “You know, what are they going to think our policy is if they get the President of the United States to say we’re going to war and it’s not consistent with what anybody else is saying?” “So it’s not good for China to look.” But former Trump administration Defense Secretary Mark Esper tried to include the President in the camp of hawks who want a tougher policy on Taiwan. “He’s said it four times now, I think he’s spot on, and they’re not trying to downplay it, they’re trying to completely undermine him to say there’s no policy change,” Esper told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “We must move away from strategic ambiguity if we are to prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.”

Tough talk about Putin

It is not the first time that the simple talk of the President resonates abroad. In Warsaw in March, he said Putin “cannot stay in power”. The White House was quick to clarify that the President was not talking about regime change. And foreign policy experts accused him of personalizing the row with Putin over Ukraine. But Biden’s comment has aged well, at least as a moral judgment. And the President has actually studiously avoided testing Putin’s invisible red lines that could spark a conflict with NATO. In fact, his bashing of Putin pales in comparison to the intemperance of some of his predecessors, including former President Donald Trump, who boasted that he had a “much bigger” and “more powerful” nuclear button than North Korea’s Kim Jong Un . And in 1984, a joke leaked during a microphone test by President Ronald Reagan about the US starting to bomb Russia “in five minutes” caused an uproar.

Biden offers to open GOP after declaring pandemic at an end

But Biden’s bluntness isn’t just causing problems abroad. His remark in the “60 Minutes” interview that the “pandemic is over” galvanized government public health officials, appeared to vex Democrats on Capitol Hill who have pushed for more aid and offered Republicans an opening. Biden qualified his remarks by saying that Covid-19 is still a problem and there is much work to be done. But it still left officials scrambling to redefine what he meant and drew criticism from epidemiologists. “What the President reflects is the fact that we have made tremendous progress against Covid-19. We are in a very different place now than we were at the beginning of this pandemic,” Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told MSNBC. they try to defuse Biden’s remark without contradicting him. The impression that Biden’s remark was a spur of the moment rather than a considered strategy was reinforced Tuesday night when Biden adopted Murthy’s framework at a fundraiser in New York. Some medical experts warned that the President had discounted the number of coronavirus deaths roughly equivalent to the September 11, 2001 toll each week. They said their measurements did not justify declaring a pandemic at the end. And they worried that Biden had hurt efforts to encourage people to step up. However, Biden may also be right. For many Americans, except for the sick and vulnerable, the pandemic — as originally experienced in the depths of 2020 — is over. The disease is now endemic and thanks to vaccines many people’s lives are returning to normal. Sports stadiums are full of fans without masks. Cut off from the world, nations like New Zealand and Australia have eased travel restrictions. Only China is sticking to its “zero Covid” policy – apparently to avoid embarrassing the hard-line leaders who authorized it. But Biden has created a huge political headache after the administration is asking Congress for an additional $22.4 billion for Covid mitigation efforts. “We need a few more sources to be sure it’s over,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday.
“Covid is not over,” said Kain, D-Virginia, adding, “We need help.” But Republicans like Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who is part of his party’s leadership, seized the moment: “If it’s over, then I wouldn’t suspect that any more money is needed.” Biden’s habit of making bold statements that are clarified may also come back to haunt him on the campaign trail. Last month, in an unexpected comment, he described Trump’s “extreme MAGA philosophy” as “semi-fascism”. Even some Democrats thought he went too far, and Biden seems to agree that he made a Hillary Clinton-style “basket of deplorables” blunder. He hasn’t used the construct since and insists that only extreme MAGA voters, not all Republicans, are bad. But everyone now knows what he really believes. The same may be true of Taiwan, though Sullivan insisted to the White House that what Biden said doesn’t count. “When the president of the United States wants to announce a policy change, he will. He hasn’t,” the national security adviser said. But after so many unequivocal statements and backtracking, how does one know for sure if it does?