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Presented by Uber Driver Stories: | | | | | |  | | By Sam Stein, Tina Sfondeles and Alex Thompson | Presented by Uber Driver Stories | Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With Allie Bice Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina There is a perception of JOE BIDEN as a cautious politician, inherently discomforted by far-reaching reform. That may be true on the domestic front (though the first six months of his presidency is challenging that notion). But as these past few weeks have hammered home, Biden’s modus operandi on the international stage has often been the opposite. When it comes to foreign policy, he has a decades-long track record of swinging for the fences. Whether or not you agree with Biden’s decision to draw down the 20-year war in Afghanistan, it is certainly audacious. He has pursued a policy that his two immediate predecessors considered but then dropped in favor of maintaining a seemingly less painful status quo. And he has stuck to it amid horrible violence, painful images, and a growing chorus of critics demanding reconsideration. “I don’t know if it is stubbornness. But he is extremely determined,” said former Senator BOB KERREY (D-Neb.), in divining his former colleague’s approach. “He was very clear he wanted the United States out… It would have been easy to modify it slightly. But then we would not be out of Afghanistan.” Being bold on foreign policy is not synonymous with being right. And over the course of his career, Biden has been repeatedly criticized for mucking it up in profound ways. Former Defense Secretary BOB GATES famously wrote that “he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Gates’ actual examples were somewhat in the weeds. He chastised Biden for voting against aid to the South Vietnamese towards the end of the war, for opposing RONALD REAGAN’s military buildup, and for voting against authorizing the first Gulf War. But where Biden has made his mark for being either a foreign policy lout or an iconoclast — depending on your point of view — has come more recently. Biden often claims he led the effort to help arm Bosnian Muslims fighting the Serbs in the 1990s (somewhat true) and loves to recount how he called Serbian leader SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC a "damned war criminal" to his face (probably true, though he has a penchant for saying he privately confronts strong men). Years later, as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden voted to give President GEORGE W. BUSH authority to invade Iraq. He argued, then and in subsequent years, that he did so not as a green light for war but as leverage for diplomacy. But as SPENCER ACKERMAN detailed in The Daily Beast in 2019, he wasn't exactly agnostic on the matter . Like the Bush crew, Biden saw Iraq as “a canvas on which to project theories of American power.” Years after the invasion, Biden was dreaming even bigger. He based nearly the entirety of his 2008 presidential campaign around the idea of dividing Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions: a Kurdish state in the north, and the other area divided between Shia and Sunni Muslims. He even had an accompanying campaign website devoted entirely to the idea: PlanForIraq.com | 
Screenshot | Webarchives of the PlanforIraq.com website | All this made Biden seem like the embodiment of liberal hawkism. And yet, as he moved from the legislative to the executive branch, something peculiar happened: Biden started taking similarly dramatic stands in the other philosophical direction. And they centered, predominantly, around Afghanistan. Just when Biden made the determination that the U.S. needed to do a massive course correction there is still not entirely clear. But as President BARACK OBAMA speculated in his memoir, it likely took place when he dispatched Biden to the region for a fact-finding mission prior to their 2009 inauguration. Having travelled there before, Biden came to some sort of determination that the country’s leadership had done nothing to rid itself of corruption or create sociopolitical stability. Months later, when the administration began considering a troop increase for Afghanistan, he circulated a document outlining alternatives. “Among the principals,” Obama wrote, “only Joe Biden voiced his misgivings.” Those who know Biden say they’re not surprised those misgivings remain or that he isn’t budging from them even after Thursday’s attack in Kabul left 13 U.S. servicemen dead. He can be self-assured, for one. And he is seasoned too, comfortable resisting those forces urging him to chart another course. For the many critics of the Afghan withdrawal, it is a generational blunder. For those who favor it, it’s historically triumphant. With Biden’s foreign policy, there often is no in between. I asked longtime Democratic operative BOB SHRUM — a supporter of Biden’s Afghan policy — if he believed that if another Democrat were president right now the drawdown would be seen through. “I think Biden is the most likely person to have the strength and conviction to go against the blob and say this mission is over,” he replied. Five minutes later, Shrum called back. “This is not without precedent, you know,” he said “JFK rejected the almost unanimous advice of the blob in the 1960s about what to do in the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, as a result, you and I are still around to talk to each other.” Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you THOMAS ZIMMERMAN? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. | | A message from Uber Driver Stories: Meet Fallon. Delivering with Uber gives her the flexibility that she needs in order to keep up with her studies because education is important to her. She says, “I always knew that even with the financial support that I had, I would still have expenses for my tuition. Uber helped me sustain my life so I can use my other financial supports to pay for my education.” Watch her story in her own words below. | | | | | | With the Partnership for Public Service After the Secret Service banned this president’s horseback riding, he rode an electric horse with no tail or head three times a day instead. Who was it? (Answer at the bottom.) | | | | 
Cartoon | Courtesy of Lisa Benson | Every Friday, we’ll feature a cartoon of the week — this one is courtesy of LISA BENSON. Our very own MATT WUERKER also publishes a selection of cartoons from all over the country. View the cartoon carousel here. | | | BACKSEAT DRIVING — New York Times reporter MICHAEL SHEAR got into a back-and-forth with press secretary JEN PSAKI on Friday about the number of options that were available for withdrawing troops and evacuating Americans from Afghanistan. Psaki said the president’s options included 1) sending tens of thousands more troops into Afghanistan to “potentially lose their lives;” 2) pulling out without evacuating 105,000 people; or 3) the option Biden chose: implementing an evacuation that has “saved the lives potentially of more than 105,000 people, certainly at the risk of the men and women who are now serving in the military.” Shear interjected, “What evidence do you have that there weren’t other choices that could have been made?” “There are of course other options, but there are consequences to every option. That is my point,” Psaki said, adding later, “I think it’s easy to play backseat [driver].” Earlier, in response to a question about Democrats who have criticized the withdrawal, Psaki essentially responded with a version of TEDDY ROOSEVELT’s famous “arena” quote that politicians have long loved to throw back at reporters. “It is easy to throw stones or to be a critic from the outside. It is harder to be in the arena and make difficult decisions,” she said. The original TR quote: “It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.” FLASHBACK: WILLIAM SAFIRE in The New York Times in 1973 when RICHARD NIXON was the one pushing the same “arena” quote. “[T]he critic does count. Not as much as the critic thinks, and rarely as much as the man who is actually in the arena, but the soul of the critic is not always cold and timid, and the arena man (gladiator or martyr) would do well to keep a wary eye on the judges in the grandstand. Sometimes it is more important to keep score than to keep scoring.” BIBLICAL TIMES: C-SPAN’s HOWARD MORTMAN flagged for us that Biden’s invocation of Isaiah 6:8 yesterday has been a go-to in the past when a president is confronting the killing of Americans abroad. BILL CLINTON used the same verse after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzinia in 1998. How Biden used the verse yesterday: ”When the Lord says ‘who shall I send? Who shall go for us?’ The American military has been answering for a long time. ‘Here I am Lord. Send me!’” MAJOR PROBLEMS: Psaki was forced to give a MAJOR BIDEN update on Friday after Judicial Watch on Thursday revealed that the president’s beleaguered German Shepherd bit Secret Service agents every day for eight days in March, “causing damage to attire or bruising/punctures to the skin.” Major is a 3-year-old rescue from a Delaware shelter and he’s been in the doghouse for biting a Secret Service agent and nipping a National Park Service employee. “He has had some challenges adjusting to life in the White House,” Psaki said. “He has been receiving additional training, as well as spending some time in Delaware, where the environment is more familiar to him, and he is more comfortable.” Emails obtained through a Judicial Watch FOIA request and lawsuit showed that agents were told to protect their “hands/fingers” by placing their hands “in their pockets” to avoid a Major nip. DOG DAYS OF AUGUST: FiveThirtyEight today with a piece headlined: “Biden’s Declining Approval Rating Is Not Just About Afghanistan.” FiveThirtyEight on July 22nd: “Why Biden’s Approval Rating Has Barely Budged in his First Six Months” | | | STILL AUDITIONING — Federal Reserve Chair JEROME POWELL signaled today that the central bank may start pulling back some of its historic support for the economy later this year, striking an upbeat tone even as the resurgent coronavirus and labor market troubles loom. VICTORIA GUIDA writes that the speech at the annual Jackson Hole conference in Wyoming could be Powell’s last big test before Biden decides whether to reappoint him to the government’s most powerful economic post. His main task was not to rattle investors — and rankle the White House — with any suggestion that the Fed would abruptly exit from a policy that has bolstered the economy throughout the pandemic. FRIDAY NIGHT NEWS DUMP: The Biden administration said Friday afternoon that their much-anticipated 90-day investigation into the origins of Covid-19 was inconclusive, according to an unclassified report released from the intelligence community. MYAH WARD reports that the intelligence community remains split on whether the virus was spread to humans from an infected animal or from a laboratory accident. The report said that while most agencies “assess with low confidence” that Covid "was probably not genetically engineered," there wasn’t enough evidence to reach a firm conclusion. | | | |   | | | | | | PORT ENVOY — Biden named JOHN PORCARI, who was a contender for secretary of Transportation last winter, as port envoy to the administration’s Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, which was created to help address the pandemic-related issues in the supply chain. TANYA SNYDER has more for Pros. | | | He was a baby on 9/11. Now he’s one of the latest casualties of America’s longest war (NYTimes’ Jack Healy) Biden administration sets up mass Covid vaccination site for Afghan evacuees (NBC’s Lauren Egan) | | | Biden met with his national security team on Afghanistan in the Situation Room. He also met with Israeli Prime Minister NAFTALI BENNETT in the Oval Office. | | | She returned to Washington, D.C., from Hawaii this morning, joining the national security briefing on Afghanistan via a secure teleconference. | | | PAIGE HILL, the White House’s senior regional communications director, knows a thing or two about skincare. What’s her routine, you ask? “I’m very loyal to my local cosmetic dermatologists at SkinPharm here in Nashville, and now most of my skincare routine includes their products,” she told the makeup brand Glossier in it’s blog “Into the Gloss.” “In the morning, I usually use their Gentle Soothing Cleanser followed by a swipe of toner. The Clarifying Pads are amazing — I sell everyone on them. Next I use Neocutis eye cream, some serums (vitamin C and hyaluronic acid), and a Brightening Lotion to even out old acne scars.” The most important step though, she adds, is sunscreen: “SkinPharm’s Sheer Defense finishes off my routine and makes my skin look like I used a BB cream.” We’re taking notes, Paige! | | | Calvin Coolidge. He was mocked on the House floor for riding it, too, According to the Washington Post, Kentucky Rep. FRED VINSON, a Democrat, read the following poem about it: “ E ‘hobbyhorse.’ ’tis easily seen/Is as silent as its master/ It trots and canters in one spot/The ‘jockey’ urging it faster.” Sick burn. We want your tips, but we also want your feedback. What should we be covering in this newsletter that we’re not? What are we getting wrong? Please let us know. Edited by Emily Cadei | | A message from Uber Driver Stories: As a woman of color, Fallon’s number one priority is to better herself through her education. And that means finishing her bachelor’s degree in business. At first, Fallon tried to go down the traditional route of working part-time. But she says it didn’t offer the flexible schedule that she needed.
“I tried to find a traditional part-time job but it didn't offer me the flexibility that I needed. They wanted me to work 25 - 30 hours, that's not something I could commit to. Uber worked around my schedule. When I finally finished school it was such a sense of empowerment and it made me want to see what was next to me because I knew what I was capable of. “
86% of drivers need flexibility in order to drive. To see more stories like Fallon’s, click here. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
