Confidence in Biden deflates with Chinese balloon
President Joe Biden’s decision until this point to avoid forthrightly speaking out on the shot-down objects that have invaded U.S. airspace up is a problematic — and perplexing — posture for a president who is actively trying to shore up support for his reelection bid.
Last Thursday, Biden finally broke his silence after facing pressure from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to address the issue publicly. His press conference, however, could be too little too late.
At a time when just 43% of voters — including only one-third of Independents — approve of Biden’s handling of national security, the president ultimately did himself a disservice by neglecting to promptly address the four bewildering and unprecedented incidents that transpired over nine days.
Biden’s silence until this point has given his political opponents an opening to cast doubt on the administration’s ability to keep Americans safe and navigate the growing conflict with China, which is responsible for at least one of the intrusive objects.
A massive Chinese surveillance balloon was shot down on Feb. 4 off the coast of South Carolina after crossing the U.S. for eight days, prompting an outcry from the public and members of Congress demanding to know why Biden had not ordered the balloon to be shot down sooner. Then, American fighter jets scrambled to shoot down another three unidentified objects earlier this week, one each day.
While the President stated on Thursday that the other three objects were most likely not connected to the initial Chinese spy balloon, we do know that they posed enough of a threat to force the closure of civilian air traffic, and to warrant fighter jets to shoot them down.
In his State of the Union address, Biden made only cursory references to the danger posed by China, and neglected to mention the incursion directly, even though stories of the balloon dominated news coverage in the days leading up to his speech.
Biden spoke at length about the need for unity and bipartisanship — and ironically, one of the few things that Democrats and Republicans have agreed on since the speech is that Biden has failed to provide a coherent explanation on China’s activities to a concerned American public.
Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, took the White House to task for the President’s silence, claiming that he has “real concerns about why the administration is not being more forthcoming with everything that it knows.”
Prominent Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal also alluded to the potential breakdown in public trust due to the White House ostensibly withholding information: “The American people need to know more so they’ll have confidence in our national security.”
It has been reported that the administration knew about the initial Chinese spy balloon and tried to hide it for nearly a week before citizens in Montana reported sightings. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to travel to China to meet with President Xi Jinping on a high-profile diplomatic trip, which was then cancelled once the balloon was shot down.
Even if the administration was acting in good faith by concealing incomplete information, and though Biden ultimately took the appropriate step on Thursday by finally addressing the public, his credibility on national security is already strained in light of his mishandling of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, and this could only worsen matters.
While domestic affairs tend to be more politically relevant in an election than foreign ones, Biden’s spotty track record on international issues — notwithstanding his largely laudable handling of the war in Ukraine — could have real consequences for Democrats in 2024.
By an 11-point margin (46% to 35%), Americans trust congressional Republicans over congressional
Democrats to handle matters of national security, per recent polling. Worse, Independents are more than twice as likely to trust Republicans more on the issue (46%) over Democrats (19%).
Again, Biden may have been right to wait to officially brief the public on the flying objects until the intelligence community has gathered all of the relevant facts. That being said, White House should have communicated that from the get-go, rather than sidestepping the issue almost entirely.
To be sure, this is not the first time this year that the administration has failed to do damage control on a highly sensitive matter.
There have been multiple discoveries of classified documents at Biden’s private home and office, and it was revealed that the administration referred one of the discoveries to the Department of Justice weeks before disclosing it to the public.
Though the White House has been cooperative and forthright with the government’s investigation into the documents, this trickle of information, from a communications angle, gives the impression that the administration was intentionally withholding information.
To clarify, the threat Beijing poses to our national security is more serious than Biden’s staff having potentially mishandled classified documents nearly a decade ago, which appears to have been a case of innocent oversight. That being said, both are characteristic of a breakdown in public communications that has unfortunately become a pattern with this White House, one that threatens to derail the president’s ability to convince the American people that he deserves a second term in office.
At the end of the day, though, the danger China poses to U.S. interests is a matter of national security and national interest, not politics. Foremost, Biden has a duty as Commander in Chief to brief Republican leaders candidly about what we know and what we don’t, so that America can be unified in standing up to what appears to be an unprecedented attack on our independence and our values.
China has threatened to retaliate against the U.S. for shooting down their spy balloon. Going forward, it is incumbent on President Joe Biden to more directly address these threats as well as the incursions in U.S. airspace — if not for the sake of his political career, then for the sake of informing the public he leads.