Putin’s worst nightmare
I have no doubt that many of you have been keeping yourselves up nights fretting about why Theodore Roosevelt hated Woodrow Wilson so much. With all that’s going on in the world to worry about, permit me to help relieve you of that one extra burden of concern with an explanation, brothers and sisters. Wilson became by dumb luck what TR could never be with all the will in the world: a wartime president. Roosevelt went to an early grave a bitter man for that very reason.
He was right to feel that way. Had he been president during the First World War, Roosevelt would have entered the fray early instead of waiting until the war’s final year as Wilson did, and he would have grabbed a double handful of extra glory for himself and the United States. Because TR was that rare thing, a politician who understood exactly what he was doing, he knew that to be a wartime president during a “popular” war was and remains practically a guarantee of immortality.
Had he lived into his late 80s TR would have seen his fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt take that idea to the next level. Had it not been for World War II, FDR’s reputation as a great president would have been harder to defend. Like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln before him, FDR’s reputation is secured because he was a wartime president during a “good” war. Had circumstances delayed the first Iraq war and had George H. W. Bush uttered the immortal words, “Ambassador Al Sabah, tonight Kuwait is free,” one year later, he would have ridden the good feeling and triumph of that moment into a second term as president.
Say what you like about war, it’s good for a sitting president when the cause is just and the world is against the enemy. And while the United States isn’t technically at war with Russia it might as well be. Not only is this current conflict good for President Biden, it may be the defining moment of his presidency. And it’s well deserved.
In his modest yet iron-nerved way Biden is steering the nation through this dreadful moment in American history with consummate statecraft. He is letting France and Germany have their time in the sun as masters of NATO while simultaneously denying Vladimir Putin the one thing he wants above all, the reputation of going up against the United States alone. It is the hottest of cold wars in history, and Joseph Robinette Biden is quietly proving to the world that America isn’t just the master of this house, but it’s big enough to share the glory.
Imagine if it had been Trump. At what point in this terrible conflict would Trump not try to make it all about himself? When would he not make himself look stupid and ridiculous by trying to make America’s allies look stupid and ridiculous?
Because Trump lost the 2020 election by 7 million votes (and I never tire of writing that) we, the voters of the United States, rescued ourselves from almost certain destruction or certain humiliation. Trump almost certainly either would have provoked Russia into nuclear war or betrayed Ukraine by shameful capitulation. In retrospect we now see clearly how Trump is defined, not by his differences with Putin, but by his resemblance to him. In the end they are both nothing more than little, stupid men, two fascist dictators trying to destroy a democracy by force.
No one can say how the ongoing conflict in Europe will end, but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather see as President right now than the current one. I don’t want the war and no right thinking American or world citizen does. But I can’t help but see that the current trouble is good for Biden and good for the Democratic Party.
By invading Ukraine Putin is not only destroying Russia’s economy he is also uniting America behind Joe Biden and the Democrats, despite the small-minded lies spread by Fox News and the MAGA crowd to make it otherwise. It is, in a sense, Putin’s worst nightmare come true, and he has no one to blame but himself. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.