David Brooks:
I think, if you had asked us if support would be this high back in February, I think we would have thought, oh, it'll — some of it will drain away.
Will Europe be strong as they are? We would have thought some of it would drain away. But that really hasn't happened. Vladimir Putin has done an excellent job organizing and uniting opposition to him.
I think it's also significant, first, that, of the trips he made, and this dangerous one, he came to Washington. People think we're a nation in decline, but it's still a reminder that U.S. leadership is still needed around the world.
And I think the conversations with Biden, not giving him everything he wants, but giving him something, shows that you can act with moral clarity without losing your head. American policy has had a tendency to oscillate between extreme interventionism to oppose authoritarianism, Vietnam, Bay of Pigs, Iraq, or extreme, no, let's stay behind our oceans, and we will allow genocide to happen. We won't act to shore up Ukraine when Putin was testing the waters.
I think the Biden administration has done an excellent job of finding that balance. They did not find it as we withdrew from Afghanistan. That was not idealistic enough. But the balance between ideals and practicality, saying to Zelenskyy, we're going to give you a lot of weapons, but not long-range missiles that could destabilize them. You can dream of total victory, and we support that, but you have really got to think about making some agreement with Putin someday.
And so I think the Biden administration has done a good job of finding that balance between the ideals we believe in and something that's actually practical and useful.
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