The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-25)

WEDNESDAY, MAY 25 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

BY ASHLEY PARKER AND TYLER PAGER

Speaking Monday in Tokyo,
President Biden sent his aides
scrambling when, deviating from
decades of carefully crafted pol-
icy, he declared that the United
States would defend Ta iwan mili-
tarily if China attacked it.
“Yes, that’s the commitment we
made,” Biden said.
Biden’s team was quick to
claim that the administration’s
policy had not changed. But the
moment was reminiscent of one
two months prior, in March,
when Biden ended a speech in
Warsaw by ad-libbing the line
that Vladmir Putin cannot re-
main in power as Russia’s presi-
dent — which his advisers again
raced to walk back.
Which was reminiscent of the
moment two months before that,
in January, w hen Biden seemed to
imply that the United States
might tolerate “a minor incur-
sion” by Russia into Ukraine — an
assertion both Biden and his
aides clambered to clarify.
“I’ve been absolutely clear with
President Putin,” Biden said the
following day, responding to the
public outcry. “He has no misun-
derstanding. If any — any —
assembled Russian units move
across the Ukrainian border, that
is an invasion.”
Biden is a self-described “gaffe
machine” who once, in 198 7,
found the need to explain to
reporters, “I feel very capable of
using my mouth in sync with my
mind.” But as president, his rinse-
and-repeat cycle of veering off-
script — followed by his team’s
now well-honed cleanup efforts
— has at times complicated U.S.
policy goals and even under-
mined Biden himself.
“There are times when presi-
dents being human misspeak and
the staff being responsible has to
clarify, but I think in this, and
other recent cases, Biden is just
speaking plainly what we all un-
derstood to be the case anyway,”
said Rep. Tom Malinowski
(D-N.J.), who served as an assis-
tant secretary in the State Depart-
ment during the Obama adminis-
tration. “In such cases, it’s gener-
ally best to let the president’s
words stand rather than walking
things back in ways that raise
further questions.”

Or as Tommy Hicks Jr., a co- chair of the Republican National Committee, put it less charitably in a tweet Monday: “A nother clean-up job from the Biden spin room. He cannot go overseas without saying something that his team has to walk back min- utes later. It’s r eckless and embar- rassing.” Monday was hardly the first time Biden has gotten ahead of the United States’ official policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Ta iwan — a feat not entirely sur- prising for a man whose critics claim is not strategic and whose allies even say is rarely ambigu- ous. Asked during a CNN town hall in October if the United States would protect Ta iwan if China attacked it, Biden replied, “Yes, we have a commitment to do that” — a c laim his aides hastened to say did not reflect a change to long-held policy. Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said she has counted five times the president has spoken about Ta iwan, and each time she says he has misstated America’s foreign policy. “The issue here is President Biden has usually added state- ments that mischaracterize U.S. policy toward Ta iwan,” Glaser said. “He has said several times we have a commitment to defend Ta iwan. Under the Ta iwan Rela- tions Act, we do not have such a commitment. We do not have an obligation to defend Ta iwan.” Glaser added that Biden’s comments may in fact “undermine U.S. interests” by provoking Chi- na and leading to an escalation of tensions. In an ironic twist, when then- President George W. Bush made almost identical comments about Ta iwan in 200 1, it was Sen. Joe Biden — then the senior Demo- crat on the Foreign Relations Committee — who excoriated him in a Washington Post op-ed titled “Not So Deft On Ta iwan.” “Words matter,” Biden chided Bush. Many of Biden’s own recent ad-libs have involved foreign policy. In March, he called Putin a “war criminal” — a term his administration had studiously avoided while determining

whether such a designation offi- cially applied. At the time, then- White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden was simply “speaking from his heart.” With his nine-word ad-lib at the end of his Warsaw speech — “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” he said, refer- ring to Putin — he upended a rousing, 30-minute paean to de- mocracy, leaving his team racing to clarify that Biden had not, in fact, meant what he had just said while the presidential motorcade idled outside of Warsaw’s Royal Castle.

“The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exer- cise power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House official said in a statement at the time. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.” Two days later, back in Wash- ington, Biden seemed to walk back the walk-back, saying, “I’m not walking anything back.” Yet in the same breath, he also contended: “But I want to make it clear: I wasn’t then, nor am I now, articulating a policy change. I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel, and I make no apologies for it.” Biden made his Ta iwan comment during a trip to South Korea and Japan this week, where a key focus was supposed to be a new economic framework intended to counter China’s growing influ- ence in Asia. Instead, Biden’s unplanned Ta iwan comment in response to a reporter’s question overshad- owed the announcement, a senior administration official said, lik- ening it to the time Biden’s comment in Poland overtook the broader message of his speech on Ukraine. With the Warsaw ad-lib, Biden’s advisers had briefly con- sidered letting his comments stand with no clarification as they debated their options — a strategy some both inside and outside the administration say would have been preferable.

“When he made that statement at the end of the Warsaw speech, there was no reason for his staff to walk it back,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a global risk consultancy. “It made them look overly cautious and like they were not on the same page. It made him look weak and like he didn’t know what he was talking about, and he did know what he was talking about.” An administration official ar- gued that in most instances, the after-action explanations by Biden and his team are more clarifications than “walk-backs.” The president will also some- times flag that he would like to add to his remarks, either doing so himself or directing his team to do so, often after a conversation with the relevant policy and com- munications advisers, the official added. Biden is hardly the first president to walk back or clarify remarks. President Barack Obama — under whom Biden served as No. 2 — walked back topics from the seemingly trivial (that oppo- nents of his agenda were “crazies” impeding progress) to the more consequential (that his administration did not “have a strategy yet” for dealing with the Islamic State terrorist group). The White House defended Biden’s history of clarifications. “The president speaks directly and candidly — straight from the shoulder, as he often says,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Doing so has been critical to his success in everything from rallying the world to support Ukraine to pass- ing the most significant infrastructure law in generations. And when he feels the need to add context to something he said, as every president has, he doesn’t hesitate to do so.” Biden’s off-the-cuff comments pepper his White House tenure like so much confetti — not an everyday occurrence, but eye- catching and diverting when they come. In January 2021, Biden said his administration was aiming for 150 million coronavirus vaccine shots in arms in his first 100 days in office — up from a previously announced goal of 100 million. Psaki then said Biden was not setting a new goal with the in-

creased number, but just expressing a hope. In June of that year, Biden initially announced he would sign a bipartisan infrastructure deal only if it moved “in tandem” with a Democrats-only bill of social spending programs that was far more liberal. His statement prompted an almost instanta- neous outcry from Republicans, and Biden promptly issued a statement walking back his comments. Noting that his remarks had “understandably upset some Re- publicans,” Biden wrote, “My comments also created the im- pression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent.” And the next month, in July, Biden said Facebook and other social media firms were “killing people” by allowed coronavirus vaccine misinformation to spread — later clarifying that he meant that bad actors were using the platforms to spreading danger- ous misinformation. In a podcast interview with David Axelrod, a former senior Obama adviser, last May, Psaki confessed that Biden’s team often advises him not to take impromp- tu questions from reporters but that the president often defies their pleas. “That is not something we rec- ommend,” Psaki said. “In fact, a lot of times we say, ‘Don’t take questions.’ ” But, she added, “He’s going to do what he wants to do because he’s the president.” Indeed, Biden is known for frequently delivering a scripted speech from the teleprompter, turning to leave, and then turning back to field reporters’ shouted questions. On Tuesday in Tokyo, Biden again briefly answered questions from the media, shortly before boarding Air Force One to return to the United States. “No,” Biden replied when asked whether the U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity toward Ta iwan is dead. Asked whether he could explain, Biden again simply offered “No” — leaving no room for an- other misstep but more than a little strategic ambiguity of his own.

Biden’s off-script remarks complicate goals, require staff cleanups

DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST President Biden, shown in March, has made comments that deviate from policy, sending White House aides scrambling to clarify.

“There are times when

presidents being human

misspeak and the staff

being responsible has to

clarify, but I think in

this, and other recent

cases, Biden is just

speaking plainly what

we all understood to be

the case anyway.” Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.)

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