White House says the public is with them on Afghanistan

From: POLITICO West Wing Playbook - Wednesday Aug 18,2021 10:27 pm

Aug 18, 2021

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In April, when President JOE BIDEN announced plans to withdraw U.S. troops, he said “it’s time to end the forever war,” a sentiment consistently backed up by the American public in opinion polls in recent years.

Gut wrenching videos and images of the Kabul airport aside, the White House still believes the politics of withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan will ultimately work in the president's favor.

Biden’s advisers for months had been downplaying the potential for political blowback over the troop withdrawal, pointing to survey data that showed a majority of voters wanted to bring troops home — or were simply tired of being involved in a war. There was also a push to focus on other strategic threats abroad, like Russia and North Korea.

West Wing Playbook asked the White House for specific polling the administration used to bolster its claims of American support for Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops by this fall. They sent us back nine polls, one dating back to a YouGov September 2018 poll under President DONALD TRUMP ’s administration, which showed 64 percent of Americans believed the U.S. should “decrease the number of troops” or “remove all troops from Afghanistan” by 2023.

A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll from this week, however, showed 49 percent of voters polled continued to support withdrawal, down from 69 percent in April. The steep drop coincides with the botched evacuation efforts in Kabul over the weekend , images of which have dominated social media and news coverage across the country. But a majority of Democrats polled still support the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

That message is also being circulated by the Democratic National Committee, which on Wednesday blasted out new polling conducted Aug. 13 through 16 by Data for Progress that shows 51 percent of likely voters either strongly support or somewhat support Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. For Democrats, 69 percent supported the withdrawal, while 51 percent of independents supported it.

“Overall, there’s more danger in the president not paying attention to public opinion than there is in paying attention,” FRANK NEWPORT, a data scientist and editor-in-chief for Gallup said. “I think a president should have polling, which measures public opinion, as part of their decision-making apparatus.

“There are caveats, but the president, or any elected official in my opinion, is always better off being aware of public opinion on key policy issues of the day, where the public stands and why, than they are of ignoring it or not paying attention to it,” he said.

Polling has come fast and furious this year since Biden’s announcement of withdrawal in the spring, largely in line with the withdrawal agreement Trump inked with the Taliban in February 2020.

The issue didn’t seem to be a big one for voters during the Trump administration. It was “rarely even mentioned” as a concern, a swing state pollster told POLITICO this week.

But voters are now paying attention, and some have seen enough this week to formulate a new opinion. Biden and the administration are plowing ahead with the message that it was the right decision — despite failing to predict just how fast the Taliban would take over. The messaging problem now is to explain the importance of what happened in a way that’s sensitive to the many humanitarian ramifications the decisions have unleashed.

The Data for Progress poll touted by the DNC took note of that. Voters were also asked if Biden should speed up the process of granting U.S. visas to allies in Afghanistan. Fifty five percent of those polled said yes.

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PRESIDENTIAL TRIVIA

With the Partnership for Public Service

Another ELVIS PRESLEY related question today — which president awarded the rock and roll star the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

(Answer is at the bottom.)

The Oval

KOCH BROTHER <3 BIDEN? The Biden administration has an unlikely ally. As the White House has scanned for outside supporters on its Afghanistan decision, it has boosted officials at CHARLES KOCH ’s foreign policy apparatus, Concerned Veterans for America and Stand Together, which has long favored a less aggressive, interventionist foreign policy.

Chief of Staff RON KLAIN on Monday retweeted WILL RUGER , the group’s vice president of foreign policy and Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Afghanistan, who wrote that Biden was “displaying real courage.”

“The White House is an important cue giver to the public and to other policy elites and we're glad to see them sharing our message,” Ruger told West Wing Playbook. He added that “there's a kind of realism in these speeches and fortitude that does surprise me.”

WHAT MISTAKES? "So you don't think this could have been handled — this exit could have been handled better in any way, no mistakes?" GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS asked Biden about Afghanistan in his sit-down interview today.

Biden defended his administration’s performance. “No, I don't think it could have been handled in a way that, we're gonna go back in hindsight and look — but the idea that somehow, there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens,” he said. More of the interview will air at 6:30 p.m. ET tonight on ABC’s “World News Tonight.”

Filling the Ranks

NATIONAL PARKS PICK — Biden has chosen CHARLES “CHUCK” SAMS III , a former longtime administrator of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, to lead the National Park Service. If confirmed, Sams will be the first Native American to lead the agency. More for Pros from ROB HOTAKAINEN.

LAW SCHOLAR JOINS WHITE HOUSE: RASHIDA RICHARDSON , a Northeastern University law professor, is joining the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as a senior policy adviser for data and democracy. According to Northeastern: “Richardson will work with various federal agencies and executive offices to ‘advise the Biden administration on its approach to the use of data, emerging technologies, and civil rights and liberties.’”

Agenda Setting

DAMAGE CONTROL — The White House is moving quickly to contain the fallout from the botched withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, hoping to blunt possible damage to the rest of the president’s agenda. CHRIS CADELAGO, NATASHA KORECKI and LAURA BARRÓN LÓPEZ report that since Sunday, administration officials have been issuing assurances to concerned Democrats and talking with allies around the world that felt betrayed.

They are calling members of Congress who have been publicly supportive of Biden to express the president’s gratitude. And they have been privately back-channeling with foreign policy experts and pundits, including those who have been deeply critical of the administration’s handling.

POTUS vs. GOVS: Biden sent a memo to Education Secretary MIGUEL CARDONA today saying Cardona’s department must take action to ensure governors and other officials are allowing a safe return to in-person learning and “not standing in the way of local leaders making such preparations.”

"We're not going to sit by as governors try to block and intimidate educators protecting our children," Biden said during his remarks on Covid-19 vaccines this afternoon. More here from BIANCA QUILANTAN.

ASYLUM OVERHAUL: The Biden administration proposed a major overhaul to the U.S. asylum system earlier today that would speed up processing, SABRINA RODRÍGUEZ reports. The proposed rule would allow an asylum officer working for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to hear some asylum claims instead of an immigration judge, in an effort to end a years-long backlog in immigration court cases.

What We're Reading

White House leans on states, school districts, to ignore bans on mask mandates (U.S. News and World Report’s Lauren Camera)

‘Frozen in time’: Lobbyists, lawmakers and mayors plead with the White House to ease Covid travel restrictions (CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez)

Why no American president followed through on promises to end the Afghanistan war — until now (Washington Post’s Amber Phillips)

CIA’s former counterterrorism chief for the region: Afghanistan, not an intelligence failure — something much worse (Just Security’s Douglas London)

Where's Joe

Biden speaks from the East Room of the White House in Washington

Biden speaks from the East Room of the White House in Washington | Susan Walsh/AP Photo

He and Vice President KAMALA HARRIS were briefed on the pandemic and vaccination efforts. Biden later delivered remarks in the East Room about the nation’s Covid-19 response and the administration’s decision recommending vaccine booster shots.

Where's Kamala

With the president.

The Oppo Book

Harris aide OPAL VADHAN flirts with deadlines.

In fact, she almost didn’t get her start in politics — a White House internship back in 2014 — because she nearly missed the application deadline.

“I applied for the White House internship at 11:59 p.m. and it was due at midnight, and I definitely did not think I was going to get it,” she told Glamour magazine in July. “I hadn’t voted, I didn’t come from a political family, but my supervisor at MSNBC — where I was interning as a broadcast journalist — told me I would be great at it.”

Despite throwing her name in the ring at the last minute, Vadhan got the coveted internship and has been in politics ever since.

“It made me realize that I didn’t just want to tell the stories to help people; I wanted to be a part of the change and truly make a difference,” she explained.

We’ll check back in a few years to see if you’ve gotten more jaded by your Washington experience, Opal.

Trivia Answer

If you said RICHARD NIXON, you are wrong! Former President DONALD TRUMP gave Presley the honor in 2018.

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Edited by Emily Cadei

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