One year later, Biden may finally be recovering politically after Afghanistan crisis
by Morgan Chalfant and Amie Parnes - 08/18/22 5:30 AM ET
The one-year anniversary of the messy U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is forcing the White House to revisit a raw and sensitive moment in President Biden’s term.
The withdrawal and the intense, negative media coverage that chronicled it helped precipitate Biden’s decline in the polls — despite broad public and bipartisan support for pulling American troops out of the country.
“Afghanistan had a really negative effect on the way that people thought about him,” said Jeff Jones, a senior editor at Gallup. “It just kind of fed into these perceptions of him not being very competent.”
The circumstances undermined Biden’s competency argument and provided endless fodder for critics with which to attack his administration.
“It marked the beginning of a dark time for his presidency,” said one Democratic strategist. “You could almost see the symmetry between his falling poll numbers at the time and that moment.”
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta likened Afghanistan to the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs in 1961 during the Kennedy administration.
But he argued that Biden, like Kennedy, had since demonstrated a strong foreign policy with his handling of Russia’s war in Ukraine and restoring U.S. alliances.
“I think he’s been able to, hopefully, get beyond what happened in Afghanistan and recognize that there are greater challenges that the United States has to deal with,” Panetta said.
Biden’s decline in public polling hasn’t been driven solely by Afghanistan.
The rise of COVID-19 cases from the delta variant was linked to a dip in Biden’s approval numbers last summer before Afghanistan was a major political issue, and inflation, high gas prices and economic concerns dragged it down for much of this year.
Biden is now seeing an uptick in some polls after a surprisingly strong summer legislative session that culminated with his signing Tuesday of a massive climate, tax and health care package. A Politico-Morning Consult poll released Wednesday found that Biden’s approval rating inched up three percentage points to 42 percent just in the past week. Still, Jones said that Biden has not yet recovered the ground he lost following Afghanistan, noting Gallup’s poll last September had Biden at 43 percent approval.
Democrats who had soured on what they saw as a lack of action by the White House are in a better mood, and the party is hopeful that will translate into a stronger midterm performance in November.
As a result, the one-year anniversary of Afghanistan is at least hitting Biden when he is at a recovery point.
The White House has been tight-lipped about how Biden, who is currently on vacation, will mark the one year since the withdrawal, which was completed on Aug. 30, 2021. Biden is currently scheduled to travel to Pennsylvania for a speech on combating crime on Aug. 30.
“Politically, I understand why they wouldn’t want to address that and maybe focus on the positive,” Panetta said.
However, he added, “It is important for both our military and State Department officials not to close our eyes to what is happening in Afghanistan and to continue to try to make sure that that situation does to further deteriorate.”
While Taliban rule has been brutal for the people of Afghanistan, with women and girls seeing their rights constrained significantly, the U.S. has also been able to focus its energy on other major global challenges and threats, foremost among them the devastating Russian war in Ukraine.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3605790-one-year-later-biden-may-finally-be-recovering-politically-after-afghanistan-crisis/
