In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

It seems like there's more and nore -- or maybe less and less, dependiong on how you look at it -- to the whole Ukraine kabuki: President Joe Biden's failure to nominate an ambassador to Ukraine more than a year into his presidency is raising concerns among U.S. officials and regional experts as Russia moves closer to launching a full-scale invasion. "President Biden has undermined the U.S.-Ukraine relationship by failing to even nominate an ambassador to Ukraine—it is a dereliction of duty and contributes to the instability we're seeing unfold today," Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, told the Washington Free Beacon. . . . Regional experts say diplomacy through social media is not helping the tense situation. A qualified American ambassador would have been able to reassure Zelensky in person and prevent a public disagreement with the White House that many saw as a boon for Russia. "It is a horrible ...

Let's look at the conventional media narrative here: Vladimir Putin, AKA Darth Vader, is threatening Planet Ukraine, part of the Rebel Alliance, with the Death Star. Princess Leia, AKA Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has sent an urgent message to Obi-Wan Kenobi, AKA President Brandon, begging for his help against the Empire. The suspense now, although not canonical to the original Hollywood version, is whether Obi-Wan, 79 years old, is either too senile or too irresoulute to respond. Got it? Except that even an updated version of the Star Wars salvation history isn't going to explain how things are actually turning out. President Zelensky, AKA Princess Leia, appears not to be on the same page with Obi-Wan at all: Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov told reporters on Tuesday that Kyiv considers – and intelligence reports from the West agree – that “internal destabilization” caused by panic over a potential further Russian ...

Yesterday I started thinkng about Biden and Ukraine vis-a-vis Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. I realize the circumstances are only very generally equivalent, but they do represent rare and potentially consequential direct confrontations betweeen the US and the Soviet Union or its successor. My conclusion yesterday was that in 1962, Khrushchev was a weak leader with backing that turned out to be unreliable, and he was badly played by Kennedy, who had speechwriters who'd studied Cicero in Catholic school, a highly effective media operation, and a telegenic persona. It didn't hurt that he lived with his family in London from 1938 to 1940 and saw Winston Churchill at close hand. No matter there was a behind-the-scenes deal whereby the US removed missiles in Turkey that were an equivalent threat to the Soviets, that wasn't public, and Kennedy came off as the young, resolute, dynamic Leader of the Free World. From a domestic political standpoint, his handling of the c...

It seems to me that the Ukraine situation could potentially work out for Biden the way the Cuban missile crisis worked out for Kennedy. According to this article , President Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis significantly contributed to his strong overall job approval scores. From the fall of 1961 until the spring of 1962, his approval ratings held steady at almost 80 percent (table 10). They then slowly, but steadily, subsided, dropping to a low of 61 percent in mid-October 1962. The Cuban missile crisis then pushed approval up to 74–76 percent from November 1962 to January 1963. Should Biden manage to appear strong and decisive and then manage to look as if he'd forced Putin to back down in some way, he'd achieve a reset -- though as the link points out, Kennedy already had high job approval, well above Biden's. On the other hand, Putin isn't Khrushchev, who was in power for about a decade before being removed, while Putin has been de facto c...

Two third-rate minds of the center right have come to the same conclusion. Glenn Reynolds, a moderate Hefnerian and a transhumanist, wrote in the New York Post, It’s time to admit it. Less than a year in, Joe Biden’s is a failed presidency. Biden knows it, the press knows it, and voters know it. And our foreign adversaries like China and Russia know it. Somehow, the cabal that put Biden in power will scheme to winkle him out of power. It is unlikely to be as straightforward as it was with Richard Nixon. Biden is not hated so much as he is held in contempt. And with Nixon, the Democrats were fortunate that his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, was corrupt in a good, old-fashioned, straightforward political way. It turns out that he liked simple brown bags, especially ones filled with cash. Agnew would have been as unacceptable as Kamala Harris, but the blatant corruption made it easy to get rid of him before proceeding to tackle the big fish of Richard Nixon. As I say, I doubt removi...

On January 17, I noted here that the Clintons and their old retainer Dick Morris have been trying to create a Hillary wave . At the time, I noted that Morris said, “Hillary has set up a brilliant strategy that nobody else is able to do,” Morris added. “Knowing the people around her, I believe there is only one person capable of that level of thinking — and that’s her husband, Bill. How's that working out? According to Paul Bedard, In the first polling deep dive into her chances to win the 2024 Democratic presidential primary and eventual race against Trump, Clinton turned out to be no more popular than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and far less popular than Vice President Kamala Harris and former first lady Michelle Obama in a potential primary. . . . “The new hope of a revived Hillary Clinton gets beaten by Trump, 51% to 41%, with Trump beating her among independents, 52% to 37%; among suburban voters, 52% to 39%; and taking 19% among liberals, 13% among Democrats, a...

A headkine on Politico yesterday: Why Schumer picked a filibuster fight he couldn't win . Chuck Schumer doesn’t typically lead his caucus into losing votes that divide Democrats. He made an exception for election reform. The Senate majority leader has run a 50-50 Senate for a year now, longer than anyone else. The whole time, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have consistently communicated to Schumer that he wouldn’t get their votes to weaken the filibuster, no matter the underlying issue. But his decision to force the vote on the caucus anyway — and get 48 Democrats on the record for a unilateral rules change dubbed "the nuclear option" — will go down as one of Schumer’s riskiest moves as leader. Politico does all it can to spin it as a some sort of secretlly brilliant move for Schumer, but it keeps trying to answer that pesky question -- why. Schumer usually touts his caucus' unity, declining to engage in extended debates over issues that divide his 50 m...