The honeymoon is over as Bidens Kabul excuses fail to convince
The honeymoon is well and truly over for President Joe Biden.
Biden’s approval rating had already begun tapering off in recent weeks as coronavirus cases surged, inflation rose and Donald Trump’s turbulent presidency began to fade into the past.
But the haphazard withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the rapid Taliban takeover of the country have dealt the biggest blow yet to Biden’s popularity.
Hundreds of people run alongside a US Air Force C-17 transport plane at Kabul airport on Monday.Credit:AP
Biden’s approval rating is now below 50 per cent for the first time in his presidency according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average. At the end of May he had a net approval rating of +14 percentage points; that’s now down to just +5 points.
To be sure, most Americans have long wanted the war in Afghanistan to be over. Even now, more Americans support Biden’s decision to withdraw all US troops than those who oppose it.
A Yahoo News poll released today found that 40 per cent of Americans want all the troops out by the end of the month. That’s down from 50 per cent in July but still well above the 28 per cent who want the troops to stay for longer. Just 17 per cent of respondents disagreed with Biden’s statement that “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselvesâ€.
The problem for Biden is not his decision to end the war but the way his administration has handled it. Scenes of bedlam at Kabul airport have made the withdrawal effort look chaotic and out-of-control. And US officials have conceded they were unprepared for the speed of the Afghan government’s collapse.
Biden, who was determined to end the war, clearly believed the more rosy intelligence assessments: just a month ago he told the American people that the prospect of the Taliban controlling the whole country was “highly unlikelyâ€. In an interview today with ABC America Biden insisted that the chaotic manner of the US withdrawal was unavoidable.
AdvertisementEven by Biden’s standards, his answers during the ABC interview were notably inarticulate and disjointed. Any viewers questioning his leadership would only have come out with their doubts strengthened.
We’ll see what long-term damage the withdrawal from Afghanistan does to Biden’s public standing. The story will eventually fade from the headlines. But the saga has dented his reputation as an experienced foreign policy expert who would restore normality after the upheavals of the Trump era.
Republicans, understandably, are painting Biden and his administration as bumbling and unfit to lead. If a general perception of incompetence hardens among voters it will be devastating for Biden - even if his decision to get out of Afghanistan is popular.
It would be unrealistic to expect everything to go smoothly when ending a 20-year war. But Americans rightly expect more competence from their political and military leadership than they have witnessed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
So do America’s allies and desperate Afghans who have supported the war effort and are now fighting to flee potential reprisals from the Taliban.
Biden’s task now is to reassert a sense of control and significantly increase the number of daily evacuations out of Afghanistan. He can only hope that the American people forgive him over time, even if they don’t forget the images of pandemonium that filled their TV screens this week.
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Matthew Knott is North America correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
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