Mistakes tend to hurt politicians most when they play into the public’s preconceptions. A man who is regarded as intelligent but aloof will be able to say something truly dumb and get away with it, but will likely be damaged if he seems detached. A man who is considered stupid but kind can sound blunt without consequence, but may be damaged by appearing inadequate. It is reinforcement, not surprise, that remains the politician’s greatest foe.
Given his carefully crafted image, the biggest political risk to Joe Biden posed by the Afghanistan fiasco is that it will make him seem incompetent — or perhaps, given his peculiar absence during the crisis, truant. But his party? That’s a whole ’nother kettle of fish. The Democrats in 2021 have a reputation for being a bunch of out-of-touch scolds who believe that reality conforms to language and who tend to leverage the same tone and vocabulary when discussing agrarian warlords as they would during a Harvard symposium on intersectionality. And boy does their reaction to the fall of Kabul confirm that conceit. Last week, as its soldiers were sweeping across Afghanistan, Jen Psaki told the press that “the Taliban also has to make an assessment about what they want their role to be in the international community.” (Yeah, and I guess Charles Manson needs to decide whether he really wants to stay a member of this church.) On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi clucked that “the Taliban must know that the world is watching its actions.” (It knows: it’s live-streaming them.) It will not be too long, one suspects, before Senate majority leader Schumer gravely lowers his glasses to explain that, for some strange reason, the arc of history seems now to be bending the wrong way.
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