# Biden's damage to foreign affairs **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 7, 2021, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202 "2021-09-07T03:19:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/122 "2021-09-08T20:05:59Z")
And let’s not forget the Iran hostage situation lasted longer than it needed to because Reagan sabotaged Carter’s negotiations with Iran and told the mullahs that they’d get a better deal with him than they would with Carter. Carter may not have been in my top 10 presidents, but he’s definitely in the top 20. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/123 "2021-09-08T20:11:04Z")
Carter wasn’t the worst president by far, but he wasn’t a raging success either. However he’s one of the best former presidents, perhaps the best, even though I don’t agree with all of his stances. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/124 "2021-09-08T20:14:27Z")
His poor regard by those who were alive during his administration is mostly because he told hard truths that the American electorate did not wish to hear. Hence President Feelgood, his immediate successor. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/125 "2021-09-08T23:14:16Z")
Reagan ended up doing ‘bidness’ with the Ayatollah to get hostages free. He exploded the national debt. He claimed victory in a Cold War that had been won mostly by previous presidents and America’s private sector. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/126 "2021-09-08T23:19:02Z")
He did the dirty work that Reagan or any president since would never have considered, which is hiring a fed chair to inflict short-term pain in order to get a longer, more important problem under control. We’re a nation that’s addicted to cheap debt. Any talk of tapering, raising interest rates, or raising taxes and the stock market gets jittery. No president can afford a stock market that’s too jittery now because there are too many individual middle-income investors who are counting on that money as a wealth builder. But because of that, lower wage workers who mostly live in a cash world are getting increasingly marginalized. And that’s probably because Reagan and Vichy Democrats removed the safety net. We live in a world in which working class investors get excited by little runs, thinking that the they’re some money bags genius just like Jim Cramer, but who will ultimately realize that they’re going to get devoured by Wall Street whales…and so will we. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/127 "2021-09-09T00:03:12Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > Reagan ended up doing ‘bidness’ with the Ayatollah to get hostages free. He exploded the national debt. He claimed victory in a Cold War that had been won mostly by previous presidents and America’s private sector. I was a kid but I remember some of the 1980 presidential campaign, and remember Reagan really making an issue of the national debt, which was a bit ironic, given how much it blew up during his time in office. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/128 "2021-09-09T00:05:44Z")
It’s no different from now: complain about the debt when a democrat’s in office and then spend like hell while cutting taxes once they win the election. I mean why not, right? They know the average Republican and average middling voter is gonna gobble it up. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/129 "2021-09-09T00:18:10Z")
He was a real Republican trendsetter! ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/130 "2021-09-09T00:42:21Z")
I don’t think the Cold War is over and I don’t think the US is going to win. Putin managed to get his stooge in the White House and that may well prove to be the beginning of the end of democracy in the US. After the last four years, it is inconceivable that Biden could do worse on anything than his predecessor. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/131 "2021-09-09T12:45:43Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > Carter had his flaws but I think judgment of his administration’s track record could use a fresh look, particularly given the circumstances that were not really under his control. If being a good president is making good decisions for the best interest of the country, he did okay. But being president also means selling those decisions to the people, and in that respect, he did very poorly. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/132 "2021-09-09T13:06:07Z")
Carter made the mistake of appealing to Americans’ better natures. As we have discovered subsequently, many of them don’t have one. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/133 "2021-09-09T14:55:31Z")
Another factor to consider when thinking about the long-term impact on the US’s reputation of how Biden handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan, is that this was pretty much a unique, one-off event. Pulling out of Afghanistan was always going to be messy, no matter when it happened. But we all knew it was coming. Sure, it could have been done better, but what’s done is done. The important thing is that there’s no reason to suppose that anything like this will ever happen again - it’s not like Biden will wake up tomorrow and decide to pull all US forces out of Korea, or Germany, or something like that. This is utterly unlike Trump, who lurched from one bad idea to the next, completely unpredictably, and obviously with no plan beyond stirring up some shit. And it’s that unpredictability that most damaged the US on the international stage. We had no idea what Trump and his cronies would think was a good idea from one day to the next. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/134 "2021-09-09T15:46:44Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > I do wonder if there is something to be said there, that a good person makes a bad president/politician. Bill Maher Joke: “There’s a difference between a great man and a nice guy. For example, General George S. Patton is a great man. _Dick Van Patton_ is a nice guy… But you woildn’t send him to beat the Nazis.” ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/135 "2021-09-09T16:38:59Z")
Selling is an important skill, but sometimes, the target market is also the problem. Truman didn’t particularly do a great job at “selling” either, but most historians rank him as among the best presidents we’ve had. Reagan was good at selling but it’s increasingly clear to the educated among us that his legacy isn’t a particularly good one in the grand scheme of things. We need less salesmanship, frankly. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/136 "2021-09-09T16:44:14Z")
Winning in 1980 would have been difficult for probably any figure who presided at the tail end of a decade that saw a humiliating withdrawal from SE Asia, two terrible recessions and stagflation, the resignation of a corrupt president, and overseas political crises that further exposed limits to American power. Americans were tired of losing and needed a punching bag, and Carter was that guy. And Reagan was something we didn’t see every day in politics. I get 1980’s result on a lot of levels. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/137 "2021-09-09T16:47:15Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > Selling is an important skill, but sometimes, the target market is also the problem. Truman didn’t particularly do a great job at “selling” either, but most historians rank him as among the best presidents we’ve had. Reagan was good at selling but it’s increasingly clear to the educated among us that his legacy isn’t a particularly good one in the grand scheme of things. We need less salesmanship, frankly. Actually they do not. A survey of historians generally shows Carter ranked in the 3rd lowest quartile out of four quartiles, with a ranking in between 18th at the highest and 33rd at the lowest. Mind with 46 Presidents each quartile is around 12 spots, so Carter’s rough average in the mid-20s puts him in the 3rd quartile (first would be 1-12, 2nd 12-24, 3rd 24-36, 4th 36-48 (obv we don’t have 48 yet.) ---
**Author:** ![Lantern2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lantern2/32/3010_2.png) [@Lantern2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern2)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/138 "2021-09-09T16:47:49Z")
While I think the administration bungled the Afghanistan withdrawal and has caused some short-term damage to America’s standing I am skeptical it will have a long-term impact. Ultimately major powers are savvy enough to understand that Afghanistan isn’t a core interest for the US any longer and that a setback there is of little relevance to US power in its core areas like Europe and Asia-Pacific. If anything the withdrawal, however clumsily achieved, liberates American resources including government bandwidth to focus on those areas. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/139 "2021-09-09T16:50:51Z")
I was referring to Truman, not Carter. And as I’ve said, I think Carter’s legacy needs to be reevaluated by historians. I don’t think of him as an elite president but he’s underrated, IMO ---
**Author:** ![ralfy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ralfy/32/600_2.png) [@ralfy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralfy)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/140 "2021-09-09T18:41:21Z")
Given the point that you’re now contradicting yourself in your own posts, e.g., no evidence of waging war but we’re waging war, propping up dictatorships, overthrowing regimes that were leaning too far left (even while engaging in detete with countries like China), I don’t see why I should even bother continuing this discussion with you. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202/141 "2021-09-09T19:27:26Z")
I’m not really sure what you are responding to in this incoherent post in which you make no points and just ramble on, but if it’s representative of your body of work it sounds good to me to cease further discussion. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bidens-damage-to-foreign-affairs/950202.md?page=8)