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Presented by the American Petroleum Institute: | | | | |  | | By Alex Thompson, Alexander Ward and Max Tani | | | Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Alex | Email Max JULIAN GEWIRTZ is an overachiever, as most 32-year-old Rhodes scholars and Harvard graduates tend to be. The China director at the White House’s National Security Council has not one but two books coming out next month — a history of 1980’s China and a collection of poetry with a political flavor. Both were completed before he joined the White House in January 2021. In “Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980’s,” Gewirtz portrays contemporary China as a totalitarian state full of propagandists at the top censoring the country’s history. He cites GEORGE ORWELL’ s oft-quoted line: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” But unlike some foreign policy thinkers on the left and the right — including some in the Biden administration — Gewirtz also sees a China that could very well pivot in a more liberal direction. The book does not offer policy prescriptions, but Gewirtz argues such reforms were actively considered in the 1980s before the country ultimately pivoted toward its current regime. “Revisiting that history should also serve as a reminder that China’s future is uncertain, despite the aura of inevitability and certain the CCP seeks to project,” he writes. “Xi’s China is not China forever… what comes after him is profoundly uncertain as of this writing.” For China scholars, Gewirtz’s work is notable not just for its research but for what it possibly says about the Biden administration’s China policy. ALI WYNE , senior analyst for Global Macro-Geopolitics at the Eurasia Group, told West Wing Playbook that “Julian demonstrates that China’s political evolution to date could have taken alternative paths, and there is no reason to assume that Xi Jinping's decisions will define its domestic governance in perpetuity.” He added that “we should question both deterministic accounts of China's past and confident hypotheses about its future.” Other China experts, however, have laid out darker views. That includes Gerwitz’s fellow NSC China director RUSH DOSHI. In his recent book “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order,” Doshi details a decades-long plan by China to disrupt American power and become the leading superpower for the rest of the 21st century. He ends his book with several policy prescriptions to both confront China and reverse what he sees as a wave of American “declinism.” The contrasting portrayals capture part of the larger debate in Washington on China policy. The bipartisan consensus on engagement and cooperation in the 1990’s and 2000’s has shifted rapidly — and some argue belatedly — to a bipartisan consensus of confrontation. The politics have changed, too, with politicians often attacking rivals with any connections to China, prompting questions about whether and how the pendulum could swing back. As we reported previously, many other members of the NSC are also on the more hawkish side of the China debate. After we published that story, one administration official reached out and said “Julian often holds down the other end of the debate. I wouldn’t say single handedly, there are others. But I for one appreciate that Julian has a nuanced approach.” Those nuances about China are also found in Gewirtz’s other book, the poetry collection, “Your Face My Flag.” One piece, “To X (Written on This Device You Made),” is a poem written about a Chinese migrant worker who committed suicide in 2014 when he worked at Foxconn when the company was the largest manufacturer of iPhones in the world. The worker, XU LIZHI, was also a poet. We decided to re-print part of that here. So here it is, West Wing Playbook’s debut poem (read it in full here). Pick it up.
Black glass our mirror when it’s
off but it is never
off. Press home button
now. Flex. Press.
My fingerprint my hot oils is that
your finger pressing the button into place now on
assembly line in Shenzhen
before it’s wiped clean
I see you I think I
see you load your
poem onto it, into me, into me now Did you, just like that, standing,
fall asleep Did you fall farther than you meant Did you
mean me to be reading this I want
to touch the sky / feel that blueness so light
but I can’t do
any of this / so I’m
leaving this
world / I was fine
when I came / and fine when I
left In this blue touchlight
fine rain starts
scrolling down MESSAGE US — Are you a Biden administration poet and you know it? Email us at westwingtips@politico.com and we may publish your comments/poetry.
| | A message from the American Petroleum Institute: New technology is cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Learn more. | | | | | | This is a fill-in-the-blank style question from reader KRISTIN LYNCH. On the ride to JOHN F. KENNEDY's inaugural ball in 1961, LYNDON JOHNSON, the newly-elected vice president, was asked by CLARE BOOTHE LUCE why he would accept the nomination to be No. 2. He replied: "Clare, I looked it up: one out of every __________ presidents has died in office. I'm a gamblin' man, darlin', and this is the only chance I got." (Answer at the bottom.)
| | | WHOOPS: During the White House’s conference on hunger, nutrition and health Wednesday, the president appeared to call out to the late Rep. JACKIE WALORSKI (R-Ind.), who was a major advocate for the conference issues — and passed away in August. "Jackie, are you here?" Biden said after thanking lawmakers. "Where is Jackie?" Later, White House press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE , when repeatedly pressed about the president’s apparent confusion, said that Biden was “naming the congressional champions on this issue and was acknowledging [Walorski’s] incredible work. … She was top of mind for the president.” Jean-Pierre fielded several other questions about the president’s bizarre remark, but did not concede that he misspoke. Our CHRIS CADELAGO noted : “Biden’s press team repeatedly made commitments — on their own, and from their earliest days of taking office — that they would always tell it like it is and not obfuscate or gaslight on issues large or small.” IAN WARNING: In remarks during the hunger conference, the president also urged Floridians to take necessary precautions as Hurricane Ian made landfall, CNN’s BETSY KLEIN and ALLIE MALLOY report. “This storm is incredibly dangerous, to state the obvious. It’s life-threatening. You should obey all warnings and directions from emergency officials,” he said. “Don’t take anything for granted. Use their judgment, not yours. Evacuate when ordered. Be prepared. Storm warnings are real, the evacuation notices are real, the danger is real.” BIDEN’S MIDTERM DANCE: Although the president’s plan to head to Florida this week for a political speech was scrapped because of Hurricane Ian, he still campaigned anyway, just from the Rose Garden instead. Our Chris Cadelago and JONATHAN LEMIRE report that we may see this strategy adopted in the president's schedule more ahead of the midterms — with Biden taking on more events closer to home that still allow him to respond to Republicans and echo the big-picture themes of the Democrats. Though the president’s schedule has been light on campaign events recently, he is expected to start averaging about two trips a week and more closer to election day. He will likely continue to favor visiting states in the Rust Belt — having already made trips to Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Cadelago and Lemire also report that Biden received a pep talk from former President BILL CLINTON in May in which the former president urged Biden to do more selling. ATTN WHITE HOUSE STAFFERS: Netflix’s “Love Is Blind” is casting people in D.C.
| | | ECONOMIC TEAM SHAKEUP: The White House is gearing up for the possibility of Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN’s departure after the midterms, according to Axios’s HANS NICHOLS, who reports no decision has been made on a potential replacement. Nichols also reports that CECILIA ROUSE, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, is expected to return to her academic post in the spring of 2023. PERSONNEL MOVE: ROBERTO BERRIOS is now special assistant to the president and director of confirmations at the White House. He most recently was senior confirmations counsel at the White House.
| | | | HAPPENING 9/29 - POLITICO’S AI & TECH SUMMIT : Technology is constantly evolving and so are the politics and policies shaping and regulating it. Join POLITICO for the 2022 AI & Tech summit to get an insider look at the pressing policy and political issues shaping tech, and how Washington interacts with the tech sector. The summit will bring together lawmakers, federal regulators, tech executives, tech policy experts and consumer advocates to dig into the intersection of tech, politics, regulation and innovation, and identify opportunities, risks and challenges ahead. REGISTER FOR THE SUMMIT HERE. | | | | | | | | MISSING TARGETS: The Biden administration said it will leave its refugee admissions cap at 125,000 for fiscal year 2023 – even though it fell far short of that goal in 2022. NYT’s MICHAEL D. SHEAR reports that refugee advocacy groups are asking the administration to process cases faster — as natural disasters, political disputes and economic crises in other countries continue to displace people. The Biden administration will have resettled roughly 20,000 refugees by the end of fiscal year 2022, which ends Friday. That is far from its current target of 125,000 (the figures do not include the tens of thousands of Afghans and Ukrainians admitted through emergency programs).
| | | | A message from the American Petroleum Institute:   | | | | | | Biden Faces South Korea Backlash Over New EV Tax-Credit Rules (WSJ’s Timothy W. Martin and Jiyoung Sohn) Gen X is late to the leadership table in US politics, prompting the question: Will it ever produce a president? (Insider’s Darren Samuelsohn) US seeks united front in Asia despite Korea, Japan tensions (AP’s Chris Megerian, Mari Yamaguchi and Tong-Hyung Kim)
| | | | DON’T MISS - MILKEN INSTITUTE ASIA SUMMIT : Go inside the 9th annual Milken Institute Asia Summit, taking place from September 28-30, with a special edition of POLITICO’s Global Insider newsletter, featuring exclusive coverage and insights from this important gathering. Stay up to speed with daily updates from the summit, which brings together more than 1,200 of the world’s most influential leaders from business, government, finance, technology, and academia. Don’t miss out, subscribe today. | | | | | | | | If ASHISH JHA has one archrival, it’s his former colleague AMITABH CHANDRA, an economist who works in the health policy world and teaches at Harvard University. Jha, Biden’s Covid-19 czar, confessed that Chandra “is both a friend but is also often an intellectual nemesis,” on a 2017 episode of POLITICO’s Pulse Check. “He pokes fun at me and a lot of the work that I do and he keeps me honest.” Jha added that he pokes fun back. Between the two of them, he added, he’s winning in their nonexistent competition.
| | | Johnson said that “one out of every FOUR presidents has died in office. I'm a gamblin' man, darlin', and this is the only chance I got,” according to an excerpt from the book “Accidental Presidents: Death, Assassination, Resignation, and Democratic Succession.” TRIVIA NIGHT!: Thanks again to Kristin for this question! We also wanted to note that Kristin and others also host a queer trivia night on the second Wednesday of each month at Dew Drop Inn in Washington, D.C. AND A CALL OUT — Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it. Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.
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