On the menu today: President Biden surprises the world by visiting Kyiv and meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky, but Ukraine is still in dire need of more ammunition, and the U.S. media are belatedly realizing that our military aid is sent to Ukraine piecemeal. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman is expected to be in the hospital, being treated for clinical depression, for anywhere from several weeks to just short of two months, which will have real consequences for his Senate committees.
Biden’s Ukraine Visit
President Biden is in Kyiv, Ukraine, today. Good for him for accepting the small but undeniable risk of traveling to a country currently being invaded by Russia to demonstrate U.S. support for those beleaguered people. Our Mark Wright observes that, “Neither the U.S. nor Ukraine has total control of the airspace. Neither the U.S. nor Ukraine could guarantee Biden’s security on the ground. The president of the United States was inside the Russian WEZ — the weapons engagement zone — the entire trip. For that Joe Biden should receive credit.”
The president said his visit with President Volodymyr Zelensky will feature an “extended discussion on our support for Ukraine. I will announce another delivery of critical equipment, including artillery ammunition, anti-armor systems, and air-surveillance radars to help protect the Ukrainian people from aerial bombardments.”
The headline above about needing ammunition is not just a reference to Zelensky’s comment from the first days of the war. Ukraine is trying to win the war without using too many artillery shells:
Ukrainian commanders are being forced to make “very tough decisions” on the use of ammunition said DW correspondent Nick Connolly. “I’ve met commanders of howitzers, of artillery pieces, who’ve told me that they don’t know how long they can keep doing their job, if they will be forced to withdraw and move away from positions and wait for more artillery,” Connolly said in Kyiv. “This is a very real problem.”
But even if more ammunition were ordered today, it would take time for it to arrive as the wait for large-caliber ammunition is currently 28 months. “Orders placed today will only be delivered two and a half years later,” NATO chief Stoltenberg has said, given that stockpiles are being depleted.
Two and a half years! Recall, as this newsletter previously reported, that U.S. Special Operations troops could resume surveillance training for Ukrainian forces as soon as 2024, and those U.S. M1A1 Abrams tanks are scheduled to arrive by 2025. Good thing those artillery shells will arrive before 2026.
I notice that over the past month, mainstream-news opinion has recognized and embraced my argument that Biden keeps sending military aid in a piecemeal, ad hoc manner, frequently reversing earlier decisions in an erratic, unpredictable approach.
I made that argument back on January 12, after Biden had changed his mind on sending Bradley fighting vehicles, but before he changed his mind on sending M1A1 Abrams tanks. (Note that Biden’s past decisions on F-16 fighters and longer-range missile systems are now looking likely to be reversed in the not-too-distant future.) I wrote: “Apparently sending these [Bradley fighting vehicles] would have been escalatory . . . right up until the minute it wasn’t escalatory. If you want to help these guys, then help these guys. Stop doing it piecemeal. Stop sending arms over in dribs and drabs.”
A few days after I wrote my assessment, Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution declared in the pages of the Washington Post that, “The time for incrementalism in Ukraine is over. Send in the tanks.”
On February 1, the Wall Street Journal editorial board lamented that, “The Biden Team hems and haws on every new weapon request for Ukraine before it later comes around, and let’s hope the president changes again and offers more military support that helps Ukraine immediately on the battlefield and after the war ends.”
Foreign-policy wonks Jamil Jaffer and John Poulson wrote in Newsweek that:
When our adversaries look at our approach to Ukraine, they don’t see bold moves, they see hesitance, delay, and weakness at every turn. The sad reality is that while there is no doubt that the weaponry we’ve supplied has been critical to Ukraine’s battlefield success, had the White House and our friends in Europe provided these weapons much earlier, we might well have deterred the Russian invasion or, at a minimum, enabled Ukrainian forces to actually win this war.
Over in the New York Times this weekend, Nicholas Kristof interviewed several retired generals who contend that, “It’s time for President Biden to reassess and give Ukraine what it needs to end this war and save Ukrainian and Russian lives alike.” The Washington Post editorial board warns that, “As Russia mobilizes hundreds of thousands of recruits in support of a massive new offensive and shifts its economy to an all-out wartime footing, the West’s piecemeal, reactive, only-what’s-essential-to-avoid-disaster approach has become a prescription for stalemate.”
Most of the above voices are really quick to emphasize that they think Biden is doing a terrific job . . . and then they point out that our past and current decision-making is a formula for a long, slow Ukrainian defeat. That seems at least a little contradictory.
In the middle of last year, CNN characterized Joe Biden as “famously indecisive,” a trait that was mysteriously missing from most coverage of Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Some of us noticed. Back in 2020, our Kyle Smith noted that:
The presidency is a job that has proven tricky for the most decisive men to handle. Should he become president, Biden may prove the least decisive man ever to hold that office. Which means America may face a leadership vacuum as it waits for President Zelig to guess what people think he should do.
President Biden wants to be perceived as Winston Churchill, but it is very hard to cultivate a Churchillian image when you’re habitually indecisive.
How Fetterman’s Absence Will Affect His Senate Committees
A senior aide to Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman told NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns on Friday that the senator will likely be in inpatient care — meaning, in the hospital — for clinical depression for “a few weeks.” Another aide told Siobhan Hughes of the Wall Street Journal that, “The hospital stay could range from weeks to more than a month, but likely less than two months.”
While Fetterman is out, the U.S. Senate will still be controlled by the Democratic Party, with a majority of 50 senators to 49 Republican senators. (Pennsylvania’s other Democratic senator, Bob Casey, should be “back to a normal schedule after a period of rest and recovery” after surgery for prostate cancer last week.)
However, Fetterman’s absence will have real consequences for the committees he serves on, as the Bipartisan Policy Center lays out:
Most Senate committees, including Sen. Fetterman’s, are currently divided with a one-seat majority for Democrats. Consequently, those committees will be divided evenly between the parties in his absence. Proxy voting remains available in committees, but may not be as useful as Democrats might hope. . . .
If these committees consider a measure or nomination while Sen. Fetterman is absent and the vote ties along party lines, his proxy vote cannot be the deciding one to report the matter to the full Senate. Without bipartisan agreement, legislation and nominations could be stalled in these three committees, potentially including President Biden’s replacement for Lael Brainard on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which is under the jurisdiction of the Banking Committee.
It is likely that on less controversial matters, Fetterman’s absence will be moot, or Republican senators will agree to “pair” with Fetterman and have one GOP senator vote “present” to ensure the measure or nomination is approved. But on the higher-stakes bills and nominations, a unified Republican opposition will have a de facto veto until Fetterman returns.
This week, the Senate is in its “state work period,” which means the chamber is not in session. The Senate is tentatively scheduled to be back in session February 27, with the next extended break scheduled for March 10 to 13. The Senate is off the first two weeks of April for Easter and Passover.
Recent days have brought a curious rewriting of the history of the past year. Over in The Atlantic, Jennifer Senior writes, “Fetterman has basically been forced to contend with the effects of a severe brain trauma while working an absurdly demanding job in one of the most polarized and toxic political climates the country has ever known.”
“Forced” by whom?
Fetterman and his campaign did not disclose his stroke for two days, and his initial statement declared that, “I’m well on my way to a full recovery.” Five hours before the polls closed on primary day, Fetterman’s campaign issued a statement that he was undergoing surgery. On primary night, his wife Gisele characterized her husband’s heath problem as “a little hiccup.” But about three weeks after the stroke, Fetterman characterized the stroke as life-threatening, declaring, “I almost died.” It was only when the primary was completed that Fetterman’s campaign released a statement from his doctor declaring “while afib (atrial fibrillation) was the cause of his stroke, he also has a condition called cardiomyopathy,” which is a disease of the heart muscle that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body and can lead to heart failure.
From the beginning, the campaign was not honest with the public about the severity of the stroke or the health issues that led to it, and it increasingly appears that no one around Fetterman was being honest with themselves about the difficulty of his recovery and amount of time it would take him to recover. The entire time, Democrats could have considered other options to run for Senate. If either of Fetterman’s primary rivals — Representative Conor Lamb or state representative Malcolm Kenyatta — were the nominee, they would probably have polled about the same — perhaps better without a serious health issue hanging over their campaigns — and they would vote the same way as Fetterman on roughly 99 percent of votes in the Senate. Fetterman beat Mehmet Oz by 263,752 votes in the Senate race. The contention that only Fetterman could have won that Senate race for Democrats was not persuasive at the time and looks even less persuasive in retrospect.
Fetterman’s primary-care physician saying in a medical update in October that Fetterman “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office” will undermine public faith in doctors’ notes. About a week later, the voters saw Fetterman struggling to speak at times during the senatorial debate.
Earlier this month, the New York Times offered a report about Fetterman that demonstrated the senator was not, as he said a half-year earlier, “well on his way to a full recovery” and that was unnervingly prophetic about the mental-health issues connected to the stroke:
The stroke — after which he had a pacemaker and defibrillator implanted — also took a less apparent but very real psychological toll on Mr. Fetterman. It has been less than a year since the stroke transformed him from someone with a large stature that suggested machismo — a central part of his political identity — into a physically altered version of himself, and he is frustrated at times that he is not yet back to the man he once was. He has had to come to terms with the fact that he may have set himself back permanently by not taking the recommended amount of rest during the campaign. And he continues to push himself in ways that people close to him worry are detrimental. [Emphasis added.]
“He may have set himself back permanently by not taking the recommended amount of rest during the campaign.” Did he fully understand that when he decided to continue his campaign? Did his family fully understand that? How much is a U.S. Senate seat worth? Is it worth “permanent setbacks” to your health for the rest of your days?
The evidence before us suggests that continuing to run for Senate was not in Fetterman’s best long-term interests.
If Fetterman had announced after his stroke in May 2022 that, “This stroke was life-threatening and my recovery will take a considerable amount of time, and I cannot put my desire to serve in the Senate ahead of my health and ability to be around for my family,” would anyone have blamed him? Would anyone who matters have called him a quitter or questioned his toughness? He didn’t owe anyone anything.
And yet, stating the obvious, common-sense conclusion that a man who just suffered a severe, life-threatening stroke might not be best served by continuing to run for Senate was denounced as “ableist” during last year’s campaign. Democrats pride themselves on their compassion and empathy, but it is more than fair to ask why their allegedly compassionate and empathetic choice was to expect Fetterman to continue his campaign.
ADDENDUM: Happy President’s Day — and don’t forget easily overlooked presidents such as David Palmer, Charles Logan, Thomas Whitmore, Jed Bartlett, and J. Robert Fowler, who guided the United States through unprecedented crises with varying degrees of success.