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With the world in a very dangerous place after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the one thing just about everyone worldwide hopes is that saner minds will prevail. There are always plenty of hotheads and madmen in the midst of a crisis, but we can all certainly hope that the cooler heads will win out in the end.
This week, President Joe Biden gave his first State Of The Union speech to the United States Congress, to the American people, and to the rest of world. This speech had to be hastily rewritten at the last minute, obviously, due to intervening events. Russia's Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine at the end of last week, which was obviously a lot more important than any political points or laundry lists of proposed legislation. So the speech got a quick makeover.
It is hard to admit, but the world should really not get its hopes up too high for any sort of outcome in Ukraine other than the one Vladimir Putin initially set out to achieve. Putin wants to completely subdue and occupy Ukraine, which he sees as nothing more than a part of Russia. He will do whatever it takes to achieve that goal. And although not inevitable, the most likely outcome by far is that Russia will completely crush the Ukrainian military and eventually conquer every city in the entire country.
Is President Joe Biden poised on the brink of a resurgence in the polls? Well... maybe. It's no sure thing, but the conditions do seem to be improving for him so it wouldn't come as a complete surprise. The next two months will be key.
Presidents used to routinely get a bump just after their State Of The Union speeches to Congress, but these events have become less and less impactful over the past decade or so. Fewer people watch, being instead content to read or hear what someone else thought about the speech. But by at least one measure, Biden's speech last night was well-received by the people who did watch it -- a CBS insta-poll showed an astonishing 78 percent of those polled approved of his remarks while only 22 percent disapproved. Will that translate into better job approval ratings for Biden overall? It's certainly possible.
But back to the speech. Biden's delivery was awesome both at the start of the speech and at the end. He showed honest heartfelt emotion when denouncing Vladimir Putin and Russia and metaphorically standing with the people of Ukraine. At the end, he spoke louder than the building applause when he called for what is best about America overcoming our worst impulses. Barack Obama couldn't have done a better job with Biden's closing paragraph, and that's high praise indeed!
President Joe Biden will give his second speech to a joint session of Congress tomorrow, in his first official State Of The Union address. That seems like a contradiction, due to the quirk that the first time a president gives such a speech it is not officially known as the State Of The Union, but few care about splitting such hairs. After being in office for over a year now, the president will inform Congress and the American people what his view of the country is, looking both backward at his first year's accomplishments and forward to what he hopes to achieve in the coming year. This is normally a balancing act, but this year's speech will be unusual in that large portions of it are being rewritten at the last minute, due to the developing situation in Ukraine.
Some weeks, obviously, are more momentous than others. This past week may be looked back upon as being one of the most historic anyone alive has ever lived through. The world order shifted on its axis and nobody is quite sure what is coming next.
The invasion has now officially begun. Vladimir Putin wasn't bluffing. President Joe Biden's warnings that this was going to happen were not overblown or premature. Russia is redrawing the geopolitical lines in Eastern Europe and the rest of the world is going to have to adjust to the new reality. This is all very grim to contemplate, obviously. We are going back in time to the 20th century, when wars of aggression were a reality that killed untold millions. So it behooves us to look ahead to what this new order will mean, especially what it will mean militarily.
How much does America care what happens in Ukraine? That is the question that is at the heart of how this crisis is going to play out politically, here at home. So far, there's no real clear answer. It's hard to ascertain, mostly because events on the ground are changing so swiftly. Americans are still forming their opinions rather than having long-held ideological positions to fall back on. Ukraine has never been a close ally of America historically, unlike other European countries such as Britain and France. We don't really have a close relationship that stretches back centuries, in other words. This is the biggest reason why the American public's opinion is so malleable right now. To put it another way, if Russia had tried to invade and annex parts of Scotland and England, we'd immediately know how we felt about it -- there wouldn't be any question at all.
Since it's fun to do, and since today's a good day for it, let's take a look at one particular moment in American history. A Republican president sits in the White House. His very presence terrifies liberals, who consider him an intellectual lightweight (and even that's being polite) and not up to the job in any way. He cares more for his television presence than actual policy matters, it seems. Both the president and his wife seem elitist to the core and disdainful of reining in their excesses after moving to the White House. He is seen as a total puppet, and the only question members of the media have to explore is who the puppetmaster pulling his strings currently is. He packed his White House with his buddies, and they spend a lot of time fighting with Washington insiders. The rest of the world is horrified that we elected such a man president. There are even rumors that his campaign cut a deal with a tyrannical foreign government in order to help him get elected. In fact, there are very real fears he could start a nuclear war at any time, since his foreign policy is both erratic and belligerent. About the only thing he can get done in Congress is to pass a massive tax cut. That's what the prevailing opinion was at the time, inside the Beltway. His name? Ronald Reagan.