Biden gives a speech in Warsaw and makes a final statement at the end which undermines what seems to have been an otherwise strong speech. He called for regime change in Russia. Everyone immediately saw the implication and there was a rapid scrambling to interpret the remark, confirm its import and back-peddle it depending on the parties involved.
The White House position is that it was an inadvertent ad lib by Biden. Althouse is skeptical.
Watching the video, I can't understand the basis for labeling the statement "ad-libbed." Biden seems to be reading a speech, a bit robotically and on the edge of stumbling, and he slows down a bit and gets quite emphatic. He seems to build up toward that conclusion and fully intend it as a conclusion. I don't see how it's "an unwanted distraction to... otherwise forceful remarks." It's delivered in a manner that is more forceful than the surrounding remarks.But how could it have been deliberately scripted? Some White House official — who? — reacted almost immediately and tried to make it go away with an incredibly lame argument that Biden just meant that "Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region."So, the evidence that it was "ad-libbed" is merely that unnamed associates of the President are saying that after the fact. The WaPo writers assist the White House:Biden’s line was not planned and came as a surprise to U.S. officials, according to a person familiar with the speech who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.
It is an interesting question in a digital and instantaneous world, how might we know whether it was an ad lib or not? Althouse points out that as a performance, there were no tells or context suggesting that the final statement was discontinuous from the rest.
If that is the case, then the only evidence that it was an unplanned ad lib would be a comparison between the pre-speech text and the speech as delivered. We are down to the issue whether anyone can trust that any White House released text which is released now is in fact the actual text as it was intended. We can only resolve the dispute if there is a text with or without the incendiary addition which is acceptably time stamped.
It used to be, and I suppose still is on occasion, that texts of major speeches were released in advance or in concert with the speech in order to circumvent any such missteps as these. I wonder if that no longer happens at all or perhaps only happens sporadically. Was there any such pre-release in this case and, if the offending policy change is in the prerelease text, will it be shared by the mainstream media.
I acknowledge the legitimacy of Althouse's argument this is so significant a departure from long-standing policy that I doubt it was in the speech. I accept that it was a poorly considered ad lib by Biden.
On the other hand, he has always been particularly gaff-prone and especially in his dotage. And seemingly especially with regard to Ukraine. It was barely six or eight weeks ago when Biden was in trouble for seemingly providing Putin with a green light to conduct a small scale incursion.
[As an aside, I had to go to DuckDuckGo to find that video. Using the exact same search phrase, Google Search did not provide much response whereas DuckDuckGo had precisely the videos and articles I recalled.]
Does this administration support regime change in Russia. No idea but the fact that the President is widely seen to be losing his cognitive grip makes it especially and increasingly difficult to discern between black letter policy, trial balloons and mere slips of the tongue.
ADDENDUM:
I did find one Althouse's commenters amusing.
Kevin said...For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in powerBiden is just repeating what he hears coming from outside the Oval Office.3/27/22, 8:12 AM
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