In the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden’s faltering debate performance last month, there was much anticipation ahead of his press conference at the conclusion of the NATO summit in Washington this week, with many seeing it as a litmus test of the 81-year-old president’s mental fitness as he seeks a second term in the White House.
In the wake of U.S. President Joe Biden’s faltering debate performance last month, there was much anticipation ahead of his press conference at the conclusion of the NATO summit in Washington this week, with many seeing it as a litmus test of the 81-year-old president’s mental fitness as he seeks a second term in the White House.
He performed well, until he didn’t. At an event on Thursday before the press conference, in front of dozens of presidents and prime ministers on stage, he introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin,” to quiet gasps, before correcting himself. And later, at the press conference, he mixed up the names of Vice President Kamala Harris and his political foe, former President Donald Trump.
In a week that began with Russia bombing a children’s hospital in Kyiv and continued with a high-profile NATO summit in Washington with dozens of world leaders, the press conference was dominated by questions about Biden’s own fitness for the job.
“It was telling that [Biden] was defending himself more than talking about NATO,” said one senior European official of the press conference. This official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter candidly. “Biden and his people, they are going into crisis management and damage control mode at a time when we are trying to push the summit as a positive story.”
NATO leaders at the summit touted major achievements in boosting defense spending to historic levels and rallying new support for Ukraine as it continues to fight a full-scale invasion from Russia. “There were good stories to tell at this summit, but it was all overshadowed by one man’s age,” the official said.
Some foreign-policy questions did eventually come up, and Biden was clearly eager to engage on them to refocus the conversation toward an area where he has traditionally been strong. Biden spoke at length and in detail about China’s role in enabling Russia to circumvent international sanctions as well as his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, referring back to his long-standing familiarity with leaders in both countries dating back to his time in the Senate and as vice president.
Afterward, aides and allies of the president held up his answers on foreign policy as evidence that he was back in top form. “No, Joe Biden does not have a doctorate in foreign affairs. He’s just that fucking good,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates wrote on X on Thursday evening.
Speaking on ABC News on Thursday evening, former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, who led the Wilson Center for a decade, went further, comparing the calls for Biden to end his reelection campaign to the 2011 revolution that deposed Egypt’s longtime dictator, Hosni Mubarak. “It’s easy to knock people off. We saw it in the so-called Arab Spring,” she said. “Where is Egypt now?” (Many experts on social media pointed out that comparing Biden to Mubarak wasn’t an ideal public relations strategy.)
Among Washington’s foreign-policy establishment, Biden’s performance served as a Rorschach test. Some saw a seasoned foreign-policy hand with decades of familiarity with the issues at hand.
“Biden did well, demonstrating an impressive mastery of the foreign policy portfolio. He was knowledgeable, thoughtful, and nuanced,” Richard Haass, an éminence grise of the foreign-policy establishment, wrote in his Substack newsletter on Friday—though he cautioned that Biden’s performance wasn’t enough to allay reelection fears.
“I thought he handled it well. He does know his stuff, and his knowledge is not based on a briefing or swotting it up in five minutes, and that shows,” said Daniel Fried, a retired career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Poland and who remains in close contact with officials in Europe.
But, Fried noted, “overhanging every discussion I had [around the NATO summit] with every foreigner was the question of U.S. politics, and that’s not dispelled by the one good press conference.” Others were even more skeptical that the press conference did much to assuage Biden’s doubters, with some opining that even on foreign-policy issues, Biden wasn’t as strong as his supporters have made out.
“Everybody here is watching with a lot of anxiety,” said Jörg Lau, a former foreign editor of the German weekly Die Zeit. “If you listen closely to the foreign-policy section, it was not reassuring,” he said. “Did he actually suggest that Europeans would be willing to cut down investment in China? That would be news here in Germany.”
“The problematic aspects of his remarks were not in delivery so much but the content of what he said,” said Sarang Shidore, the director of the global south program at the Quincy Institute. “At the outset, Biden gets marks for asking the critical question—what sort of world should replace the Cold War and post-Cold War era? However, he then failed to answer it directly.”
At the summit, many European leaders grimaced through questions from reporters about whether they thought Biden fit to stay president. Some said they had no concerns about the matter, and others avoided answering the question entirely.
“If you’re a European leader, you’ve got no influence over this election whatsoever, nor is it your job to, so you’re never going to say Biden is too old and will lose the election, even if you privately think that,” said Nathalie Tocci, the director of the Rome-based Istituto Affari Internazionali and a former top advisor to the European Union’s foreign-policy chief. But, she said, “I think there’s a widespread view in Europe that it’s very difficult to imagine Democrats winning this election with Biden as a candidate.”
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