When a president is unpopular, he usually deserves it, and President Biden deserves his near-disastrous approval ratings on just about everything. As Jim pointed out this morning, though, the percentage of Americans who feel Biden is not being “tough enough” on Vladimir Putin is 56, as opposed to only 36 percent who feel he’s basically responding appropriately to the situation. That 36 percent would appear to represent the hardcore partisan base that would back Biden on more or less anything.

So I’m in the minority on this one: I think Biden’s Ukraine policy so far is broadly correct. While I think Biden was caught off guard by the invasion of Ukraine, most of us were, because it seemed like such an outlandish move on Putin’s part. (I tend to agree with those who say Putin wouldn’t have tried such a thing if President Trump were still in office; Trump is such a wild card that our enemies are likely to think, not without reason, that he might respond disproportionately to any action.) But I think Biden’s actions have been the appropriate ones: severe economic sanctions, military aid, weapons shipments, attempts at making diplomatic contact, aid to refugees, and proposals to welcome 100,000 of them to the U.S.

To me, this is pretty much the slate of options short of war, and declaring a no-fly zone would mean entering the war. Biden seems to me to be doing just about everything he can that makes sense. President Trump was asked what he’d do differently on Fox News, and couldn’t give a coherent answer.

Biden is, of course, wrong about virtually everything else, and he is a terrible president. But he seems to value staying out of the war highly. I do too, and so I give him credit for that.