The president in my mind's eye literally seems taller to me these days. Look at the script flip he has performed:
1) Omicron to Omigone.
2) He doesn’t prepare or anticipate to “So, I was just reading Putin’s brain waves and this is what he is going to do next.”
3) Tucker Carlson “Why do people hate Putin? Ukraine is essentially a creation of the State Dept” to “Whatever the context Putin started this war" to Lindsey Graham "We need to take Putin out."
4) Nobody can even find Ukraine on a map to the Empire State Building lit up in blue and yellow.
5) Trump: “This is genius by Putin. The Russians are peacekeepers! We could use some of them on our southern border. That’s a nice piece of real estate. Very savvy of Putin” to “Bomb the shit out of Russia with our planes painted with the Chinese flag”, to Pence: “There’s no place in our party for Putin apologists.”
6) "If you invade we're going to cut you out of the global financial system". He did and he did. "Toldja!"
7) McConnell: “Now we’re going to see if the Democrats can govern” to “Hey Mitch, I want a $14B package of aid for Ukraine: “Yessir, Mr. President, will do.”
8) “He has sidelined/doesn’t trust Harris” to "The vice president is going to Poland on a super-sensitive mission for me."
For now, Biden has completely defanged every wing of the Repubes from Romney to the Grand Old Putinists. They literally have nothing to say besides nonsense.
Political success is ephemeral, none of this is over.
a) Walensky and Woodcock could still make a fool of him by not anticipating the next variant.
b) We're going to hit 1M coronavirus deaths on his watch.
c) The inflation report this morning is going to be awful. But the Bidens are getting ahead of these stories now. They're anticipating. Jen Psaki prepared Americans for the inflation report yesterday. Americans, at least in the short run, are not going to blame Biden. It's "common sacrifice," we are all Ukrainians. Biden’s a “war president” now.
d) Putin will probably still capture Ukraine, but that has gone from certainty to probability. We’re not out of the nuclear woods yet, Blinken’s not an A-teamer, but Lloyd Austin, Avril Haines and William Burns are, they have been absolutely brilliant and proved to be inspired choices at Defense, DIA, and CIA.
In my mental image of the mental image that the American people have of Biden right now is coalescing around Teddy Roosevelt cum ramrod-straight Abe Lincoln.