Foreign Policy Doesn’t Elect You
By 
I didn’t want to distract in the previous Biden post from the particular issue of his unwillingness to drop out, but this bit struck me:
The president appeared obsessed with foreign policy and uninterested in his second-term plans.
This is a broader issue I think that is worth pointing out. For a long time in the post-Vietnam era, the Democratic Party almost intentionally did not take foreign policy seriously. Neither Carter nor Clinton knew anything about foreign policy. Both kind of figured it out, Carter on his principles and Clinton when he realized it would make him look tough. But Clinton was always really a mess on foreign policy and the inconsistency of it was noted at the time.
In the 21st century, Democrats started taking foreign policy a lot more seriously, in part as a result of media criticism over all of this. So Obama, while not being experienced in foreign policy when he took the office, very much paid attention to it. I didn’t always agree with him, but it was hardly inchoate. Hillary obviously was well trained in foreign policy. So was Biden, being a long long long time senator and a very active VP.
That’s all fine and good. But Democrats also have to remember–foreign policy does not get you elected. Biden needed to tell Americans why to vote for him again! He did a terrible job of that! His messaging was horrible the whole administration–see the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Act” signs on every public works project in America! C’mon Joe, own it! But also, I think a lot of Democrats have come to believe that being serious on foreign policy makes political sense and….I don’t think the evidence suggests this to be true. We are pro-Ukraine, but do regular Americans really care? Etc. Regular people find the rest of the world really suspect! Americans travel to Cancun if they travel overseas and that’s because they don’t have to hear Spanish.
Maybe you all disagree and I am not talking about paying not attention to foreign policy or the merits of being a foreign policy oriented president. But I am very much suggesting I see plenty of evidence that not putting domestic politics front and center of every day you are president is a very bad idea for Democrats.