As President Joe Biden struggled to cope with the end of the American mission in Afghanistan, surrounded by every superpower and watched closely by everyone, he felt like a lonely man and tried to keep his eyes on the bottom line.
He said, "Ladies, gentlemen," as the death toll rose in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital. "It was time to end a twenty-year war."
All presidents need to be able to lead in times of crisis. It has been a fast turnaround for him on multiple fronts.
U.S. military forces race to rescue their fellow citizens, Afghans aligned, and get them out of Afghanistan by Tuesday's deadline.
Biden was caught in a crisis of real importance that overrides all the platitudes he gave when he ran for the office and during his first months in office. He likes to proclaim, "America is back." America is leaving Afghanistan after the longest conflict in American history.
The U.S. will be leaving Afghanistan with the Taliban forces that it has fought for back under control, and with an affiliate from the Islamic State group. This is an organization declared defeated by the U.S. president. It will also leave Kabul's airport.
Biden's first six months were filled with goodwill. He won points simply because he wasn't Donald Trump. The United States seemed to be on the brink of defeating the pandemic. Biden was given credit for helping to reduce the pandemic.
Those days are now a distant memory. He is being criticized with Republicans blaming his actions for the disaster in Kabul, and Democrats separating from him on major issues.
Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary, said that Biden may feel frustrated or resignation at the moment's turmoil.
Joseph Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, believes that the chaotic scenes in Kabul, which are being witnessed by the world, are not due to poor evacuation planning or incompetence from the United States. It is simply the result of defeat.
He said, "It seems that we're seeing something happen that was predictable once we stepped into," "There is no memory. This is what happens after you lose a battle.
How they deal with crises is what defines a president. Biden has now faced more than one and each requires immediate attention.
The drama unfolds in Kabul, but the delta variant coronavirus threatens the stability of much of what his administration has achieved in the first six month. He also had to deal with deadly flooding in Tennessee, wildfires that destroyed West Virginia, and hurricanes that battered the East Coast.
The Supreme Court dealt him setbacks this week. First, justices ordered the reinstatement of a Trump-era policy that forced migrants seeking U.S. asylum to wait in Mexico, often in dire conditions.
Then, as pandemic-era housing aid sits bottlenecked in state and local governments, the court's conservative majority blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a temporary ban on evictions, leaving perhaps 3.5 million people at risk of losing their homes.
At the moment, Afghanistan is more important than anything. Biden said "the buck stops at me", but alternately blamed Afghan forces, their government, for giving in to the Taliban and Trump for not negotiating a good agreement for the U.S. withdrawal.
Biden made the decision to withdraw the U.S. from the agreement. He will regret it a few months later. One of his main reasons for running for president is being tested. His four decades of experience at high levels of government has prepared him to deal with the demands of the office with seasoned competence.
Cal Jillson, a Southern Methodist University presidential historian, stated that there was no way to leave Afghanistan.
He said, "You can't stick the dismount." It is going to be ugly if you don't win. We didn't win."
He said that "while Trump actually arrived at a deeply flawed agreement with the Taliban, it was Biden who undertook to execute that plan, with minor revisions." Biden, he said, " along with the public, wanted out of Afghanistan, the sooner the better. No one likes the idea of an exit.
Presidents' legacy can be forever stained by controversies, but they can also pass.
In his first year, President Bill Clinton was subject to the terrible tragedy at the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia. President George W. Bush, however, had the false predicate that weapons of mass destruction would be used for starting war with Iraq. The humiliation of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by President John F. Kennedy was not a problem for Kennedy. Trump was able to survive.
At least one of these presidents was enough of an historian to understand that the loneliness of that office, as William Howard Taft described it in 1913 when he left, would be part of the territory.
"He is alone -- at the top -- in the loneliest job in the world," Kennedy told a 1960 Democratic dinner before his election that fall.
"He cannot share the power, he can't delegate it, and he can't adjourn. ... Only he can decide which areas we defend, not Congress, the military or CIA. Und he is not some generalissimo beleaguered on an island.
