Our ideal leader should have many positive attributes, but one of the most needed is courage. Most important decisions are fraught with danger–should the plan fail, the leader himself or herself can be at risk. We know that, and many of us decry the politician who sticks his finger in the wind waiting for the popular opinion (along with its vicissitudes) to give him a preferred policy. And we’ve had great leaders in the past who were willing to risk all for causes they believed in (whether rightly or wrongly). Lincoln certainly comes to mind here. Reagan’s stubborn refusal to use soft rhetoric and detente to engage the Russians. Paul Volcker’s willingness to take short term interest rates to unprecedented heights to break the inflationary cycle of the 1970s. I would include Donald Trump’s standing by Brett Kavanaugh in his supreme court confirmation. Yet many of our courageous leaders of the past also had their failures–with courage seeming to morph into cowardice. Or if that is too harsh a term, inordinately fearful. We see this in the Bible, with Father Abraham lying twice about his wife being his sister, even while in the middle of those examples, he bravely fights to rescue Lot. Impulsive and brave Peter becomes a cowardly hypocrite because of fear of the Judaizers before being confronted by Paul (as reported in Galatians). King Saul ultimately lost his kingdom by caring more about what the people said rather than what God had said. In politics this behavior flows naturally, as the very political process necessitates a fair amount of “people pleasing.” Donald Trump, for example, is not showing much political spine on abortion right now. Yet, whatever I may think of Donald Trump, the pejorative “coward” would not come to mind, despite his lack of bravery in every issue.

Alas, not so for Joe Biden. And this light bulb just clicked for me. I’ve vigorously critiqued him on his abject failure of leadership in Afghanistan, with the resulting deaths of 13 Americans and the subsequent emboldening of autocrats everywhere. His vacillation in the days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, his unwillingness to give the Ukrainians the weapons it needed in the early days allowing the Russians to cement their position, his unwillingness to confront Iran, despite its surrogates attacking U.S. forces directly. While I condemn his leadership and policy positions (and I haven’t even mentioned his destructive economic policies), it didn’t lead to me viewing him as a coward. Even his abandonment of his long-held position of the Hyde amendment as a condition of getting the nomination in 2020 I thought of merely as being a finger-in-the-wind political chameleon.

Yet now we have Israel. Mr. Biden knows and has articulately defended what the right response is. Israel is in an existential threat against a terrorist organization that hides behind human shields to enable their barbaric deeds. And Mr. Biden is the head of the most powerful country in the world, a country who has stood by Israel repeatedly. The urgency of the situation after Oct 7th led him to reflexively respond to what he’s always believed–the U.S. supports Israel and will not abandon her. But he did not initially understand the depth of the rot that progressivism has wrought in young people on college campuses. He did not have the time initially to think through the implications of his support for Israel to the Arab compound in Dearborn Michigan, a must win state for him this fall. Even today Mr. Biden, after several good speeches supporting Israel, is nevertheless holding back weapons funded by a bill he just signed, in a pathetic attempt to play both sides of the fence. Many reports on the right label this policy craven, which it is. Yet I have now come to believe something worse. His lust for power and reelection is so strong that he will pay any price to the mob in what may be a vain pursuit for that hope. There is no long-held belief that he will not jettison to avoid their wrath. The man whose inauguration speech held out hope that he would govern as a moderate to “heal America” torn by divisions has nonetheless governed only to please the radical left. He is certainly not a leader. You could be nicer and call him a follower. But I’ve come to the conclusion it’s worse. He is simply……a coward.