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The organizing principle of Joe Biden’s presidency has been standing up for the idea of democracy.
His political campaigns are built on defending democracy at home, versus would-be election sidestepper Donald Trump.
Much of his presidency is built on defending democracy abroad, versus Ukraine invader Vladimir Putin, among others.
There are cascading frustrations this week – on both the domestic and foreign fronts – to test Biden’s promise that democracies will win over autocracies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky failed to change minds about further US aid despite paying personal visits to US lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
Biden himself recently said at a Hanukkah event at the White House that Israel’s government, which he described as the “most conservative government in Israel’s history,” needs to change its severe campaign against Gaza.
“The whole world’s public opinion can shift overnight, we can’t let that happen,” he said.
Biden has previously framed the need to fund Ukraine’s fight against Russia and Israel’s fight against terrorism as part of a larger struggle in defense of democracies.
“Hamas and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy – completely annihilate it,” Biden said in October, during a prime-time pitch for aid for the two countries.
Demands in exchange for Ukraine funding
House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement after meeting with Zelensky that he supports Ukraine fighting back against Putin and promised that Americans “stand for freedom and they’re on the right side of this fight.”
But Johnson wants some things in exchange for another $61 billion to keep the fight for freedom supplied, which is making the prospect of a deal unlikely before US lawmakers break for the holidays. Funding for Israel and border security is also caught up in the standoff.
Appearing with Zelensky at the White House, Biden said failure to immediately pass the funding would be “the greatest Christmas gift” for Putin.
House Republicans are demanding changes in border policy to reduce asylum-seekers and cut down on people crossing the border. But that’s not all.
“What the Biden administration seems to be asking for is billions of additional dollars with no appropriate oversight, no clear strategy to win, and none of the answers that I think the American people are owed,” Johnson said.
If Biden wants more money to prop up Ukraine, he’ll also have to agree to US border policy, according to Republican senators who share his view that containing Putin is an urgent priority.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina represents both the view that Ukraine funding and border funding are essential.
“I’m not going to vote to help Ukraine, Israel or Taiwan until we secure our own border,” he said on Fox News on Tuesday.
Moments later in the same interview, he rejected the growing position among some Republicans that Ukraine should just roll over and give Russia some of the invaded territory.
“If you think pulling the plug on Ukraine makes us safer, you missed a lot of the 20th century,” Graham said.
The political reality in the US, where two parties hold power in Congress, is that Biden needs Republicans in order to get the additional $61 billion he wants for Ukraine.
“When people elect a Republican majority of the House, you have to listen to what they have to say,” Sen. Mitt Romney, the Utah Republican, told CNN’s Manu Raju on Tuesday.
Americans gave control of the House of Representatives to Republicans last November – a democratic exercise by voters that is also affecting Biden at the personal and political levels in a way that does not happen for dictators.
Putin, who has already been at the top of Russian politics for more than two decades and through five consecutive US presidents so far, could stay in power for at least another decade after changing Russian law last year to give himself access to more terms as president.
Putin recently announced he would seek reelection in 2024, although the openness and quality of Russian elections are routinely questioned by watchdog groups.
Putin has also effectively used Russia’s justice system to send political rivals to prison. The most notable of these rivals, Alexey Navalny, has gone missing in the penal colony where he is serving a 19-year sentence, according to his allies.
In the US, the justice system has been working, albeit slowly, to hold Trump accountable for his effort to undo the 2020 election and for mishandling classified material after he left the White House. The cases may have actually made Trump stronger as a candidate in the Republican presidential primary.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the House are working hard to create an equivalence between those consequential alleged crimes and Hunter Biden’s income from foreign companies and admitted failure to pay taxes on time. The president’s son has been indicted in connection with tax crimes in Southern California.
Perhaps still smarting from the two impeachments of Trump, Republicans are moving Wednesday to formalize the impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden – they want to force more cooperation from the White House – and amp up their yearslong search for evidence of financial impropriety by Biden and his family.
Trump’s impeachments, recall, were for pressuring Ukraine’s president to drum up an investigation against Biden before the 2020 election and the second for Trump’s role in inciting the insurrection after he lost that election.
Republicans in the Senate acquitted Trump in both of those impeachment efforts. Biden’s political party will certainly do the same, assuming the impeachment inquiry leads to an actual impeachment, which is still an outside chance given Republicans’ slim House majority and the number of Republican lawmakers who represent districts Biden won in 2020.
Biden, Trump and House Republicans will all face the ultimate democratic test, voters, in about a year.
