‘America First’ Means a World in Chaos
‘America First’ Means a World in Chaos
Plus: Biden raises mammoth campaign cash haul in New York as pro-Palestinian protesters throng outside.
A blank front page on today’s Wall Street Journal to commemorate one year since reporter Evan Gershkovich was detained in Russia on trumped-up charges: “HIS STORY SHOULD BE HERE.”
A blessed Good Friday to all who observe it. Happy Friday.
‘Back to a 1930s World’
In an important new article in the Washington Post, Robert Kagan reminds us what’s behind the old slogan of “America First,” taking us back to September 1940:
Two years earlier, Hitler had annexed Austria and invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia. One year earlier, he had invaded and conquered Poland. In the first months of 1940, he invaded and occupied Norway, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. In early June 1940, British troops evacuated from Dunkirk, and France was overrun by the Nazi blitzkrieg. In September, the very month of the committee’s formation, German troops were in Paris and Edward R. Murrow was reporting from London under bombardment by the Luftwaffe. That was the moment the America First movement launched itself into the battle to block aid to Britain.
“America First” was an ignoble effort, and it failed. The slogan and the movement were rightfully cast onto the ash heap of history, and stayed there for the next 75 years.
But the slogan and the movement have now reappeared.
They have reappeared as we face the largest ground war in Europe since the 1940s. It’s a war that, like its predecessor, is unambiguous in its moral clarity. It’s a war whose outcome will be decisive in its strategic consequences.
There is of course one big difference between now and 1940: Though “America First” was powerful in 1940, the Republican nominee for president, Wendell Willkie, stood against it. The Republican presidential nominee rejected its short-sighted abdication of American leadership and its mean-spirited abdication of American responsibility.
Today, on the other hand, Donald Trump will once again be the nominee of a Republican party that he fully controls.
So the die is cast even more starkly in 2024 than it was in 1940: It’s “America First,” or it’s an acceptance of our responsibility to stand with a fellow liberal democracy that is bravely and effectively resisting a brutal tyranny.
Kagan points out how consequential and how dire would be a victory for “America First” today:
The whole configuration of power in the international system will change. All powers, whether friendly or hostile to the United States, will adjust accordingly. In this respect, those Trump Republicans who wish to sever American commitments to allies are not only bringing back a 1930s worldview. If they take power, they will bring us back to a 1930s world.
The good news is that the American people understand this. A February Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey showed a strong majority of the American public favoring economic assistance and additional military supplies for Ukraine, and agreeing that the U.S. security relationship with Ukraine does more to strengthen U.S. national security than it does to weaken it.
The bad news is that Trump rejects this view.
And the other bad news is that House Republicans, at Trump’s urging, are right now preventing Ukraine from getting the support it desperately needs and deserves.
Joe Biden has of course made the case for Ukraine—most recently in the first minutes of his State of the Union address. But the administration hasn’t put the issue front and center as consistently as they might have. They can continue to hold off for a week or two, until after the House returns on April 9, to give Speaker Mike Johnson the chance to do the right thing.
But if the House Republicans don’t act then, it’s surely time to go on the political offensive.
And even if House Republicans do come around on aid for Ukraine, it will be time to go broadly and aggressively on the offensive against the Republican nominee, Trump.
Biden needs to say clearly that the American people understand the need to help Ukraine and to defeat Putin, that his administration (and some decent non-Trump Republicans) agree, and that Trump does not.
And Biden needs to explain that whereas his administration is acting in the spirit of FDR and of Harry Truman—and, yes, of Ronald Reagan—Trump wants to cut and run. If Trump wins, he will undercut the most important national security interests of the United States.
A 1930s world is not a world we should want to live in. But that is the world the election of Trump will bring about.
—William Kristol
Biden Rakes in the Dough in NYC
Quite the split-screen at President Biden’s mammoth $25 million New York fundraiser with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton last night. Per WaPo, the “star-studded event” offered “a joyous counterpoint to the sense of angst” felt by Democratic voters “wary of Biden’s political standing”:
More than 5,000 people attended the sold-out event at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, Biden’s campaign said, with guests paying anywhere from $225 to $500,000 . . . Legendary photographer Anne Liebovitz was on tap to take portraits of donors with Biden, Clinton, and Obama . . . It featured musical guests including Queen Latifah, Lizzo, and Ben Platt. Mindy Kaling served as host, at one point joking that it was nice to be in a room “with so many rich people.” An after-party for 500 VIP guests was co-hosted by first lady Jill Biden and DJ D-Nice. For the evening’s main event, comedian Stephen Colbert moderated a conversation between Biden, Obama, and Clinton.
Well, mostly joyous, anyway:
The program was not without controversy—after the three presidents took the stage, pro-Palestinian protesters began shouting and disrupting the event before being ushered out. A large crowd of demonstrators also gathered outside the venue to express their displeasure with Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza, some of them clashing with police.
It’s Democratic 2024 coalition politics in miniature. Biden is not going to hurt for money this cycle: He enjoys a massive and growing cash advantage over Donald Trump, whose base-flogging fundraising tactics face diminishing returns while he siphons tens of millions of dollars away to fund his legal battles. And Biden is going to do just fine among the sort of voters who attend the Met Gala.
But whether Biden can manage to woo back the voters who have detached from his coalition over the war in Gaza—who trend young, progressive, and relatively anti-institutional, and who are notable in rejecting Biden’s preferred framing of 2024 as another referendum on Trump—remains to be seen. Seeing the one group berating the other as they left the venue made for quite the visual.
And too much hanging with the glitterati presents its own political pitfalls, too: Trump counter-programmed Biden’s fundraiser with a New York stop of his own, attending the wake of a New York City cop gunned down on the job.
—Andrew Egger
Catching up . . .
Getting over high inflation is going to take some time: Axios
Inside the Wall Street Journal’s “very intense” effort to free Evan Gershkovich: Politico
Trump attends wake for fallen NYPD officer as he ramps up rhetoric on crime: NBC News
VA Gov. Youngkin arrived like a GOP star, but arena failure clouds legacy: Washington Post
How Justice Thomas’s “nearly adopted daughter” became his law clerk: New York Times
The CDC is squandering a breakthrough vaccine: The Atlantic
Baltimore port workers are “living in a dream” as harbor remains blocked: Washington Post
Quick Hits
1. Pick Up the Phone, Joe
For anti-MAGA Republicans, the negative case for voting Biden in November is obvious: Trump must be stopped, and Biden’s the other guy. But writing in Politico, Jonathan Martin wonders: Why isn’t Biden trying harder to find carrots to go with that stick?
It’s been well over two months since [Chris] Christie dropped out of the Republican presidential primary. How has Biden not called Christie, whom he’s known since the former governor was in student government as a University of Delaware undergraduate, to ask for his support? Or, if he thought that too soon or too direct, he could at least have asked Christie to get together. But that ask has not been made. . .
It’s political malpractice. And Christie isn’t the only anti-Trump Republican or independent waiting for their phone to ring. Prominent former GOP officeholders, from George W. Bush to Mike Pence to Paul Ryan, also haven’t been contacted . . .
[Christie] resisted the temptation [to run for president as an independent] in part because he found No Labels’ infrastructure and finances wanting. Their handing him a list of potential running mates that included (in some cases lapsed) Democrats such as congresswoman-turned-Fox News personality Tulsi Gabbard, disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and even Maryland’s Doug Gansler also didn’t help.
However, that Christie nearly mounted an independent campaign that would’ve given the center-right voters Biden needs another place to go should not only alarm the president. It should rouse him to the challenge. This is not 2020.
2. Moynihan on PBS
A new PBS documentary on the life of Daniel Patrick Moynihan drops tonight. You can watch the trailer here:
Cheap Shots
If Trump is elected, in the 1930's world,we will be on the wrong side.
The reactionary plutocrats who actually run the GOP -- those for low taxes, low wages, few business regulations and few public services -- believe this election could be their last stand. They are protectors of wealth and property, hierarchy and privilege against those who have fought for some semblance of social, economic and political equality for the past 150 years. They would turn the clock back to 1900 (or maybe even to the MIddle Ages). Even though they think Trump is a clown and a fool and regard his MAGA voters as so much riff-raff, he is their nominee. This is going to be a very nasty time. Those who value representative government need to be prepared to fight back, in ways they are probably not used to.