Sitting U.S. Presidents have the luxury of getting their message out in a large variety of ways. Writing Opinion pieces in newspapers, and especially news organs known to be quite free with their criticism of a President's administration, is not among the top "go to" vehicles for the dissemination of Presidential views.
But these are not ordinary times. Discipline within the once fairly stable universe of two leading parties surrounded by a sometimes very loud cluster of smaller issue or ideologically zealot faction to theory political left and right have given way to fracture within the principal parties themselves. In Both cases these zealot/ideological faction appear to embrace agit-prop modalities refined by both European fascist and Marxist-Leninist cells before 1939 with the purpose of effecting "soft" revolution (then certainly, the agendas of the current crop might be out of reach for many). The leadership of these principal political organs then appear to have embraced a strategically pragmatic stance that amplifies the ability of zealot/ideological factions to better reach their goals if only by thwarting the business of government for the rest of a population (whose ignorance and correction appears to be one of the many goals of these groups and their comrades embedded within other influential social organs).
And so one appears to approach a moment when the United States appears more willing to run from its international commitments and (old) values than to meet them--the most short term politically palatable option for big party leaders as wary of their counterparts as they are of the zealot/ideological factions within their own organs.
For the sitting U.S. President, this presents a conundrum--as it does for the population that may have little interest in re-education, or of being led by zealot/ideological factions that appear to embrace the sensibilities of pre-Russian revolution Soviets (for a sympathetic consideration here: Antonio Negri, 'Soviet: Within and Beyond the "Short Century"' (2017) 116(4)
South Atlantic Quarterly 835-849). Te conundrum--how does one break the cycle of disproportionate power relationships among and within fractured political organs incapable of returning to something like a stable equilibrium more in accord with the expectations of American liberal democracy?
One answer appears to be to reach out to and through the organs of opposition when matters touch on issues of fundamental importance to the Republic. One of those issues involve the geopolitical position of the United States and its duty as the leading forces of liberal democracy established at the cost of millions of American lives and those of U.S. allies on which a political moral order was established (imperfectly to be sure) and which continues to muddle through toward aspirational goals that are true to itself and the moral-political social order it established and to which it owes the highest duty. The leadership core of American liberal democracy, along with those of its closest allies, has determined that the situations in Ukraine and Israel represent fundamental challenges to that order, its vision, including that of equality under law in a diverse rules based international order (such as it is now and such as it aspires to).
And so one finds President Biden appealing both to the people and to their elected representatives (at least those who continue to represent their constituents rather than their fidelity to ideologies the interpretation and application of which they have usurped) in the form of an "Opinion/Commentary of the Wall Street Journal. Whatever one thinks of either its text, its form, or the specifics of its objectives, the text reminds one of the importance of fidelity to core values and the institutions through which that may be realized.
The text may be accessed HERE and follows below.
