By declaring that the Russian leader “cannot remain in power,” the U.S. president seemed to suggest a drastic change in U.S. policy — prompting a scramble by White House officials.
They can also, as Biden discovered on Saturday, spark a global uproar in the middle of a war.
But the comment also seemed to provide a window into Biden’s current thinking, and some of the mind-set that the administration has with regard to Putin. Some officials, both in the U.S. and abroad, said Biden’s comment was an honest acknowledgment of reality — the U.S. will likely never have a normal relationship with Putin after the invasion. But the bigger worry may be that, in the short term, Biden’s rhetoric could escalate tensions and make any diplomatic off-ramp harder to find.
David Rothkopf, a foreign-policy analyst and CEO of the Rothkopf Group, compared Biden’s speech to President John F. Kennedy’s speech in Berlin expressing solidarity with German citizens in 1963.“There is within Biden’s comment a kernel of truth,” Rothkopf said. “Vladimir Putin can’t lay waste to a country, kill tens of thousands of civilians, commit serial war crimes and expect to be welcomed back into the community of nations.
“I feel very capable of using my mouth in sync with my mind,” he told reporters, with more than a hint of defensiveness, in 1987.At the launch of his 2008 campaign, Biden came under criticism for calling Barack Obama “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Later, as Obama’s vice president, Biden was captured on a microphone whispering an expletive to Obama at the bill signing for the landmark health care law.
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