WASHINGTON (AP) — There is no purely personal opinion from the Oval Office on major policies. Armchair quarterbacking when you’re the president is fuller when you’re the one with the ball.
Armies can lean on your words; Markets can shake; Diplomacy can unravel.
That hasn’t stopped President Joe Biden from placing visceral strains on the Ukraine war – labeling Russia’s Vladimir Putin a war criminal, advocating a coup in Moscow, branding Russian war operations as genocide – and then saying it’s all his personal, not the President’s opinion.
It sows confusion in perilous times.
America is not a mere spectator in this conflict. The US is Ukraine’s main arms supplier from the west, a key source of military intelligence for Kyiv and a driving force behind global sanctions against Russia. It has generations of experience in speaking to and about its historic nuclear rival.
But on the ensuing superpower issues these days, Biden is “speaking from his heart,” his aides have repeatedly said. Similar to his predecessor, he sometimes reacts to what he sees on TV. It is argued that it should not always be taken literally.
A declaration of genocide is the harshest judgment in history against a country that can oblige signatories to a UN treaty to intervene. Concerns about this obligation prevented the US from recognizing the killing of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis by Rwandan Hutus in 1994 as genocide. It was more than a century before a US President, Biden, acknowledged the Armenian Genocide last year.
But in a speech in Iowa on Tuesday, Biden equated Russia’s mass killings of Ukrainian civilians with genocide and stuck to that position on his way back to Washington: “Yes, I called it genocide,” he reiterated. Lawyers will decide whether Russia’s behavior conforms to international standards, the president added, but “it sure feels like it to me.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised Biden’s comments. “True words from a true leader,” he tweeted. “Calling things by their name is essential to resisting evil.”
But as the war unfolds in Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron warned: “I’m not sure escalating words serves our cause.”
“I’m being careful with the conditions today,” Macron said. “Genocide has a meaning. … It’s crazy what’s happening today. It is incredible brutality and a return to war in Europe. But at the same time, I look at the facts and I want to continue doing everything I can to end the war and restore peace.”
At the White House last month, Biden said of Putin, “I think he’s a war criminal,” in response to a shouted question as he walked out of an unrelated law-signing reception. He said the same thing again when he visited US troops in Poland.
The White House rushed to say that this was not necessarily a US policy signal.
“He spoke from his heart and spoke from what he saw on TV, namely barbaric actions of a brutal dictator during his invasion of a foreign country,” said spokesman Jen Psaki.
Psaki on Wednesday dismissed the notion that anyone was confused by the idea that Biden’s personal comments did not reflect federal policy. She said Biden ran for office and promised “he’d shoot from the shoulder is his phrase he uses a lot and tell them straight.” And his comments yesterday, not just once, but twice, and on war crimes, reflect that.”
After meeting Ukrainian children torn from their families in the war, Biden blasted his staff to declare his apparent support for regime change in Moscow when he said of Putin, “For God’s sake, this man can’t stay in power.”
Again, not US politics.
“I expressed the moral outrage I felt toward this man,” Biden said days later. “I have not articulated any policy change.”
It was Donald Trump who ditched the idea of a scripted presidency in every possible way, with his proliferation of tweets paving the way. Some reflected politics. Some just reflected what was in his mind at that moment.
“We made a dramatic transition during the Trump presidency,” recognizing that sometimes a president doesn’t speak for the government or the country, only for themselves, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the university’s Annenberg Public Policy Center from Pennsylvania. She credits the Biden White House for being quick to set the record straight when that happens.
In Jamieson’s academy of political rhetoric, some public figures like Barack Obama are considered introspectors—hearing what they’re saying as they’re saying it and catching themselves dithering. Biden, she says, lacks this filter.
“Obama was a great self-observer,” she said. “It’s not Biden. For Biden, the distance between thought and expression is not very great.”
Along with longstanding foreign policy credentials and a deep knowledge of how government works, Biden has a history of loose-lipped and allowing his emotions to get the better of him.
This occasionally caused tension when he was Obama’s vice president, such as when Biden endorsed same-sex marriage rights in a 2012 television interview before his boss was ready. Biden “probably got over his skis a bit, but out of generosity,” Obama said at the time, adding that he “would have preferred to do this my own way and on my own terms.”
White House advisers say Biden’s comments reflect that in his five decades in Washington, he has never been one to keep his mouth shut, even if it gets him into trouble.
They see Biden’s statements, separate from his administration’s policies, as a response not only to the horrific scenes in Ukraine, but also to political pressures at home to say and do more in response to the Russian invasion.
For David Axelrod, the former adviser to the ever-cautious Obama, Biden’s remark that Putin “can’t stay in power” illustrated the Washington adage that “everyone’s strength is their weakness.”
Biden’s strength is his empathy and authenticity, Axelrod recently said on his podcast, and that can also be a weakness if a president says the wrong thing in times of crisis.
The risk of spontaneous statements is hardly new to Biden. In 2016, Axelrod foresaw a similar concern over Trump’s ability to make highly controversial comments.
“When you’re President of the United States, you can’t just shoot first and think about what you’re saying later,” he then said, “because people can actually start shooting based on what you say.”