NYT Lists 10 Things President Biden Did Right In 2022

If you listen to the radical right, you might think President Biden has had a horrible year and can't do anything right. But that simply isn't true.

Here, from Marc A. Thiessen of The New York Times, are 10 things that President Biden did right this year:

1. He saved Ukraine

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Biden’s handling of Ukraine tops both my best and worst lists this year. Here is the best: After Russia invaded, Biden rallied our allies to support Ukraine’s self-defense — providing arms, money, intelligence and diplomatic support that stopped Putin from seizing Kyiv. At the start of the conflict, no one thought Ukraine could survive; today, Ukraine’s courageous armed forces are on the offensive, retaking territory Russia unlawfully seized. For all the flaws in his Ukraine strategy, Biden deserves credit for saving a free and independent Ukraine.

2. He declared the United States will defend Taiwan

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Not once, not twice, but four times since taking office (most recently in September), Biden has vowed that the U.S. military would defend Taiwan if Communist China attacked. Beijing is on notice: The policy of “strategic ambiguity” is dead (notwithstanding White House aides who tried to walk back Biden’s comments each time). It is U.S. policy to defend Taiwan against unjust aggression.

3. He killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri

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Of course, Zawahiri was living openly in downtown Kabul thanks to Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. But 11 years after opposing the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, Biden ordered the drone strike that took out bin Laden’s right-hand man and successor. He also took out Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in northwest Syria and resumed full ground operationsalongside our Kurdish partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which have kept a check on the Islamic State in the region.

4. He won support for Finland and Sweden to join NATO

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While he must still manage Turkish intransigence, Biden got both NATO allies and a 95-1 bipartisan majority in the Senate to support the admission of the two Nordic nations to the Atlantic alliance — a major blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who opposes any NATO expansion.

5. He kept Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations

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President Donald Trump listed the IRGC in 2019 as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign after he withdrew from President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal. Iran demanded that Biden delist the IRGC before it considered returning to compliance with the deal. Despite his misguided efforts to revive that agreement, Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in April that the IRGC would remain on the list and that the decision was “absolutely final.”

6. He secured extradition of the terrorist charged with bombing Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 190 Americans

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Libyan intelligence operative Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud — suspected of building the explosive device used in the 1988 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, is the first terrorist linked to the attack to face justice in the United States.

7. He signed the first bipartisan gun legislation in decades

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Following the school shooting in Uvalde, Tex., Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, co-sponsored by Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), that protects the rights of lawful gun owners while cracking down on criminal misuse of firearms — including incentives for states to implement “red-flag” laws; increased funding for mental health and school safety; added scrutiny of gun buyers who are under 21 or domestic abusers; and stronger penalties for straw buyers and gun traffickers.

8. He launched a “full-court press” against China’s domestic semiconductor industry

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Biden blocked U.S. companies from selling chips or semiconductor equipment to China. He also cracked down on China’s “Thousand Talents” program to recruit U.S. science and technology experts, issuing export control rules that prohibit U.S. citizens from supporting China’s advanced chip development — cutting off the flow of Silicon Valley expertise. This will severely curtail China’s ambitions to develop its own cutting-edge semiconductor industry.

9. He is sending B-52s to Australia to counter China

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Building on last year’s historic trilateral security agreement with Australia and Britain — known as AUKUS — to help Canberra build nuclear-capable submarines, Biden announced plans to deploy up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to a dedicated air base in northern Australia to help counter Chinese hegemony.

10. He acted to prevent a crippling national rail strike

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It wasn’t exactly Ronald Reagan firing striking air traffic controllers, but Biden did get Congress to pass bipartisan legislation forcing rail worker unions to accept the overly generous contract his administration had negotiated, avoiding a strike that could have crippled our economy and exacerbated inflation.

 

Seven Important Things We Learned In 2022

The year is starting to come to a close, and Jennifer Rubin (pictured) has written an op-ed for The Washington Post detailing seven things we learned in 2022.

1) The media embarrassed themselves by accepting GOP narratives so willingly. Rarely has so much cynical political punditry been so wrong. The public will tune out the House Jan. 6 select committee and the hearings would be boring, many in the media predicted. The 2022 midterms would be a red wave, they said. President Biden’s term was a failure with scant achievements. Yet the select committee’s hearings turned out to be gripping (and perhaps motivated the Justice Department to move more expeditiously in its Jan. 6-related investigations); regardless what happens in Georgia Tuesday, Democrats performed unexpectedly well in the midterms; and Biden racked up some impressive wins (e.g., the Chips and Science Act, the Pact Act, the Inflation Reduction Act). Not coincidentally, each of these colossally wrong takes were Republican talking points that solidified into conventional wisdom. The media must do better.

2) When antidemocratic insurgents tell you who they are, believe them. Democracy really is at risk. Biden, whom the media derided for warning about the MAGA movement’s “semi-fascism” and the dangers of election denial, correctly grasped the threat to constitutional government that former president Donald Trump and his acolytes pose. Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig highlighted this “clear and present danger” in his testimony before the Jan. 6 committee. Sure enough, a flock of election deniers appeared on the ballot this year; Trump threatened there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before” if he were indicted; prominent members of the GOP attacked the FBI for carrying out a lawful search warrant; and Trump eventually called for the “termination” of the Constitution.

3) Authoritarianism is weaker than democracy. Authoritarian regimes this year revealed their inherent brittleness and ineptitude. We witnessed Russia’s disastrous war of aggression against Ukraine; China’s ongoing debilitation from covid-19; Iran’s massive street demonstrations; and Turkey’s worsening economic conditions. Altogether, they underscore the underlying weakness of strongmen who try to crush dissent and oppose the free flow of information. For all their faults, democracies remain best able to handle crises, enlist the imagination of their people and provide opportunity for the greatest number of people.

4) The covid-19 pandemic has created a mental health crisis for youths that will result in long-term suffering if not addressed. While we may have weathered the worst of the covid crisis, thanks to the combination of private-sector scientific excellence and the federal government’s competency, we have not returned to “normal.” The Post reports, “Nationally, adolescent depression and anxiety — already at crisis levels before the pandemic — have surged amid the isolation, disruption and hardship of covid-19.” That, combined with the shortage of mental health professionals and the nearly quarter of a million children who have lost a parent, means it is not realistic to expect schools to manage the problem on their own. A private-public response as substantial as the one for the pandemic is required.

5) American women will not return to the 1950s. The Supreme Court’s notion that the 14th Amendment’s meaning was fixed in the 19th century, thereby excluding women’s rights to bodily integrity, is unsustainable. The court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade triggered a furious political backlash, first evidenced in Kansas’s vote rejecting the removal of abortion rights from the state constitution and again in the midterms, when all five abortion-related measures on state ballots resulted in pro-choice victories. Indeed, pro-choice turnout in the midterms helped Democrats keep the Senate and minimize losses in the House.

6) Social media companies are far less stable than once thought. As Ian Bogost recently wrote for the Atlantic: “Facebook is in decline, Twitter in chaos. Mark Zuckerberg’s empire has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value and laid off 11,000 people, with its ad business in peril and its metaverse fantasy in irons. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has caused advertisers to pull spending and power users to shun the platform.” The speed with which Musk is incinerating his $44 billion investment is particularly shocking. One study found that there are “no signs currently of the #TwitterMigration to platforms such as Mastodon or The Post or the others slowing down at this point.” It’s unknown whether a single alternative or multiple smaller platforms may emerge or whether information-sharing might go back to a more deliberate pace based on direct human interaction. But those who believe that allowing a few moguls to control social media is destructive and antidemocratic have reason to welcome whatever comes next.

7) The courts remain a bulwark for democracy. The Supreme Court, between its radical departure from precedent, the outpouring of partisan rhetoric from its right-wing members and its refusal to adopt a binding set of ethics rules, managed to fall to record-low levels of trust among Americans. Thankfully, there is more to the American judicial system than the high court. Other judges and juries continued to render justice, including tough sentences for the killers of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery; the verdicts and stiff sentences for Jan. 6 insurrectionists; the multiple acquittals in bogus cases brought by special counsel John Durham; and Trump’s repeated failure to find a court that would recognize his “absolute immunity” from civil lawsuits. Yes, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon was widely ridiculed for her indefensible rulings in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. But even then, an appellate court managed to straighten things out. Courts are not perfect, but they provide a key guardrail for our democratic system.

A Hope For Our Troubled World

 I thought it would be good to bring in the new year with this quote from Bertrand Russel (from his book "Human Society In Ethics And Politics"):

"I allow myself to hope that the world will emerge from its present troubles, that it will one day learn to give the direction of its affairs, not to cruel swindlers and scoundrels, but to men possessed of wisdom and courage. I see before me a shining vision: a world where none are hungry, where few are ill, where work is pleasant and not excessive, where kindly feeling is common, and where minds released from fear create delight for eye, ear and heart. Do not say this is impossible. It is not impossible. I do not say it can be done tomorrow, but I do say that it could be done within a thousand years, if only men would bend their minds to the achievement of the kind of happiness that should be distinctive of man."

Fear Rises Of The Year 2022

The chart above is from the new Axios / Momentive Poll -- done between December 14th and 16th of a national sample of 2,602 adults, with a 2 point margin of error. 

It shows that people have an increasing fear of 2022.

Nine Important Political Questions For 2022

 Amber Phillips in The Washington Post lists the nine biggest political questions for 2022: